# Journalist outs transgender con man while investigating story - Unethical or not? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [January 23, 2014, 1:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491 "2014-01-23T01:04:16Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 10
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 4:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/181 "2014-01-28T04:51:55Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > You are, though. You keep saying he treated the “and a mechanic” part as an afterthought when it’s actually in the same sentence as the statement that she was born a man. I never said they weren’t in the same sentence, and in fact I see their being in the same sentence as part of the problem. The way that the sentence is written presents “and a mechanic” as an afterthought. It’s tacked on to the very end, after a comma. But even had the sentence been rearranged a bit, presenting these two facts about Dr. V’s past together in this same sentence suggests that being transgender and lying about her credentials were all part of the same big con and that Kinney should have been upset about both. > [@](#): > > Should he have dealt with this at all in this section of the story? No- because he shouldn’t have disclosed that information to Kenney in the first place. But the rest of it is just assuming the worst. Hannan tells us that a chill ran up his spine when it was first suggested to him that Dr. V was transgender, and later tells us how surprised he was that Kinney managed to remain calm when he heard the news (from Hannan!). I have no way of knowing Hannan’s true intentions, but he’s a journalist and it’s his job to express himself clearly. Even his editor acknowledges that, while he does not believe this was Hannan’s intent, it sure _looks_ like he’s saying “Ew, gross, she used to be a man?” ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 4:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/182 "2014-01-28T04:55:07Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I never said they weren’t in the same sentence, and in fact I see their being in the same sentence as part of the problem. The way that the sentence is written presents “and a mechanic” as an afterthought. It’s tacked on to the very end, after a comma. But even had the sentence been rearranged a bit, presenting these two facts about Dr. V’s past together in this same sentence suggests that being transgender and lying about her credentials were all part of the same big con and that Kinney should have been upset about both. They’re both things Kinney didn’t know, and they’re both kind of surprising. I agree he shouldn’t have told Kinney this in the first place because it’s just not relevant and leaves this implication. > [@](#): > > Hannan tells us that a chill ran up his spine when it was first suggested to him that Dr. V was transgender, and later tells us how surprised he was that Kinney managed to remain calm when he heard the news (from Hannan!). I have no way of knowing Hannan’s true intentions, but he’s a journalist and it’s his job to express himself clearly. Even his editor acknowledges that, while he does not believe this was Hannan’s intent, it sure _looks_ like he’s saying “Ew, gross, she used to be a man?” Yes, and that’s why he shouldn’t have written it that way. But I don’t think that’s what he was attempting to say. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 12:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/183 "2014-01-28T12:33:03Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > … Probably, but why is that [that only the transexual and suicide sensationalism is what made it “a story”] a knock on Grantland? … Consider exploitively appealing to sensationalism and purient interests as business as usual if you want to, but don’t pretend that is not what was being done. **Marley** believes the story was not angled to do that. I read it and cannot understand how such can be concluded. > [@](#): > > … That’s a more than a bit of projecting. I think it’s just as likely the chill came from realizing his background research yielded nothing because he was essentially looking for someone who didn’t exist. Why do you assume this was a chill of revulsion instead of revelation, comprehension, or recognition? … More a chill of yummy salaciousness. YMMV but it reads that way clearly to me. > [@](#): > > Impossible given that the info [her previous name and gender] came out during the course of the investigation. Hiding something like is not something reporters do. Absolute bullshit. A reporter is under no obligation to report everything. The _specific_ name and the gender were not material other than for sensationalistic story telling. Including those bits of information served no public good. Immaterial information should be edited out. > [@](#): > > Of course the suicide made it a story; a full story that was worthy of being published. … Why? > [@](#): > > … Simmons’ account seems to indicate this is just factually incorrect. Caleb already knew about her being born a man when when article was initially rejected. They told him to keep reporting because there was no ending to the story given that Dr. V cut off all contact with him. … Care to retract your claim, or back it up with evidence? My read of the timeline may have been mistaken. Transexual alone was not sensational enough. Suicide too made it exploitable enough. My apologies. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 12:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/184 "2014-01-28T12:48:48Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > … and that’s why he shouldn’t have written it that way. But I don’t think that’s what he was attempting to say. There are things that should not have been said. Here at least is bit of agreement. What the attempt was? We disagree. Can you agree with the editior, at this point? They put up an article at best based out of ignorance and your obligation as a reporter should be to inform yourself about what you are reporting on. If one agrees that the transgender information needed to be included then they were obligated to become a bit less ignorant before writing and publishing. At least in retrospect the editor minimally acknowledges that they could have written something that included some information that actually served the public good. The editors and writing staff was, at best, too invested in seeng this a Chinatown knock-off. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 2:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/185 "2014-01-28T14:20:48Z")
I said a couple of pages ago that they should’ve run the story past someone who knew more about transgender issues. They wouldn’t have lost anything of value from the final article and it would have been a lot smarter. I’m not sure where the Chinatown comparison comes in, but they were right that there was some significant deception and fraud here. They didn’t realize that Dr. V’s gender should have been separately from that - which isn’t surprising if they weren’t familiar with this stuff. That said, they didn’t treat her as sensationalistically or unsympathetically as some people here have suggested. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 8:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/186 "2014-01-28T20:52:02Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Consider exploitively appealing to sensationalism and purient interests as business as usual if you want to, but don’t pretend that is not what was being done. How exactly am I pretending that was not what was being done. Without the suicide, there really isn’t any story worth running. Do you really think, “no-name maker of golf club you know nothing about has false credentials” is worth reading about. And sensationalism, is not the same as exploitation or prurience. > [@DSeid](#): > > More a chill of yummy salaciousness. YMMV but it reads that way clearly to me. Yes, but several people who actually know the guy have confirmed what his intent was, and didn’t make the leap you seem to be making. > [@DSeid](#): > > Absolute bullshit. A reporter is under no obligation to report everything. The _specific_ name and the gender were not material other than for sensationalistic story telling. Including those bits of information served no public good. Immaterial information should be edited out. Nonsense. If you are gonna tell the story, you need to tell the entire story and all relevant information. First, even if he failed to report it, it would have come out given it is likely why Dr. V committed suicide. Second, you cannot explain the behavior of those involved without it. Entire conversations and interactions are only understandable because the reader knows the entire story. To not include it makes little sense, and I cannot imagine a journalist not doing so. To quote Simmons: [QUOTE=Bill Simmons] But even now, it’s hard for me to accept that Dr. V’s transgender status wasn’t part of this story. Caleb couldn’t find out anything about her pre-2001 background for a very specific reason. Let’s say we omitted that reason or wrote around it, then that reason emerged after we posted the piece. What then? [/QUOTE] Clearly omitting such a fact would be basically journalistic malpractice, and do little to prevent her from being “outed”. > [@DSeid](#): > > Why? Before the suicide, there really isn’t a complete story worth telling. In September, the story is rejected because the subject won’t confirm information, and will not return calls. The story essentially is about a small time fraud who conned people who don’t really seem to think they were conned. Why would any reader care about that? When you learn the subject commit suicide, it almost forces your hand. Again, to quote Simmons: [QUOTE=Bill Simmons] Here’s why we made that decision … For us, this had become a story about a writer falling into, for lack of a better phrase, a reporting abyss. The writer originally asked a simple question — So what’s up with this putter? — that evolved into something else entirely. His latest draft captured that journey as cleanly and crisply as possible. As editors, we read his final draft through the lens of everything we had already learned over those eight months, as well as a slew of additional information that ended up not making the final piece. When anyone criticizes the Dr. V feature for lacking empathy in the final few paragraphs, they’re right. Had we pushed Caleb to include a deeper perspective about his own feelings, and his own fears of culpability, that would have softened those criticisms. Then again, Caleb had spent the piece presenting himself as a curious reporter, nothing more. Had he shoehorned his own perspective/feelings/emotions into the ending, it could have been perceived as unnecessarily contrived. And that’s not a good outcome, either. As we debated internally whether to run the piece, four issues concerned us. First, we didn’t know about any of the legal ramifications. That’s why we had multiple lawyers read it. Second, we were extremely worried — obviously — about running a piece about a subject who took her own life during the tail end of the reporting process. How would that be received externally? Was the story too dark? Was it exploitative? Would we be blamed for what happened to her? And third, we worried about NOT running the piece when Caleb’s reporting had become so intertwined with the last year of Dr. V’s life. Didn’t we have a responsibility to run it? The fourth issue, and this almost goes without saying: Not only did we feel terrible about what happened to Dr. V, we could never really know why it happened. Nor was there any way to find out. [/QUOTE] I think they clearly had to write something given the position they were in. > [@DSeid](#): > > My read of the timeline may have been mistaken. Transexual alone was not sensational enough. Suicide too made it exploitable enough. My apologies. Not only your timeline, but your implication that they were largely motivated by antipathy for transgendered people and desirous to denigrate them and exploit their “otherness” for shits and giggles. That is just not borne out by the facts as we know them. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/187 "2014-01-28T21:01:45Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > Can you agree with the editior, at this point? They put up an article at best based out of ignorance and your obligation as a reporter should be to inform yourself about what you are reporting on. If one agrees that the transgender information needed to be included then they were obligated to become a bit less ignorant before writing and publishing. At least in retrospect the editor minimally acknowledges that they could have written something that included some information that actually served the public good. The editors and writing staff was, at best, too invested in seeng this a Chinatown knock-off. What exactly would have been different if you assume they would have “outed” her anyway? She is already dead at this point. What exactly should Grantland have done differently in the final piece that was published? Additionally, why is it necessary to treat the subject of your piece differently if they are trangendered? Why should they have run it past some other trans-person. And I don’t mean doing so just as a means of avoiding controversy. What practical difference would it have made, and why do you assume that insight would be expressed by whomever they had read it over? I ask again, would you expect any public figure to get a pass, or receive more gentle reporting because they were know to be depressed or have some other medical issue? Generally, reporters should not be held responsible for the actions of others based on their reporting information in the public’s interest. ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/188 "2014-01-28T21:06:35Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > He’d already revealed this information to the reader and told us how spine-chilling he found it. I don’t remember reading this part of the article; exactly how spine-chilling did Hannan find this information? Was it “heart-stoppingly” spine-chilling? Or maybe it was “pure terror” or “looking down the barrel of a gun”? What was the exact qualitative phrase that Hannan used to tell us “how spine-chilling he found it”? ---
**Author:** ![Snowboarder\_Bo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/snowboarder_bo/32/229_2.png) [@Snowboarder\_Bo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Snowboarder_Bo)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/189 "2014-01-28T21:12:31Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Even his editor acknowledges that, while he does not believe this was Hannan’s intent, it sure _looks_ like he’s saying “Ew, gross, she used to be a man?” No, his editor didn’t acknowledge that. His editor acknowledged that other people were interpreting it that way. Do you always have this much trouble with reading comprehension? ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/190 "2014-01-28T21:17:47Z")
The Chinatown bit is a reference to the Editor’s explanation: > [@](#): > > For us, this had become a story about a writer falling into, for lack of a better phrase, a reporting abyss. The writer originally asked a simple question — So what’s up with this putter? — that evolved into something else entirely. His latest draft captured that journey as cleanly and crisply as possible. As editors, we read his final draft through the lens of everything we had already learned over those eight months, as well as a slew of additional information that ended up not making the final piece. When anyone criticizes the Dr. V feature for lacking empathy in the final few paragraphs, they’re right. Had we pushed Caleb to include a deeper perspective about his own feelings, and his own fears of culpability, that would have softened those criticisms. Then again, Caleb had spent the piece presenting himself as a curious reporter, nothing more. Had he shoehorned his own perspective/feelings/emotions into the ending, it could have been perceived as unnecessarily contrived. If this is to be taken at face value the image is Jack Nicholson’s private eye investigating a simple infidelity case and finding what evolved into an ever deepening abyss. I have a hard time not thinking that this trope drove their perception some. Thing is that the movie addresses the Nicholson character’s role in driving the story from there rather than merely uncovering it, even as it utilizes the shock value of the salaciousness he finds. Hannan forced himself and his preconceptions in as a prime actor in the story he was trying to cover yet reported in a manner that was unaware that those actions and preconceptions were pertinent factors. In the process he reinforced those preconceptions among who share them. Agreed with the editor: the fault was not Hannan’s alone. There was a groupthink of preconception and ignorance. That does not excuse it. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/191 "2014-01-28T21:26:16Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > Additionally, why is it necessary to treat the subject of your piece differently if they are trangendered? Why should they have run it past some other trans-person. And I don’t mean doing so just as a means of avoiding controversy. What practical difference would it have made, and why do you assume that insight would be expressed by whomever they had read it over? They probably would have told Hannan how ugly the “a chill went up my spine” comment sounded and told him he shouldn’t out Vanderbilt to people who knew her. Neither of those things was necessary in the story and they both made Hannan and Grantland look insensitive. And none of this is particularly specific to transgender issues. It could apply to any complex social issue. > [@](#): > > Generally, reporters should not be held responsible for the actions of others based on their reporting information in the public’s interest. That’s part of the problem: this wasn’t really in the public’s interest. It was entertainment. To me, this was a really interesting, weird story. But it was a diversion, not breaking news. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you, because a lot of journalism takes that form. But reporting is evaluated by a bunch of different criteria and public interest was not one of the big factors here. This didn’t affect a lot of people other than Yar’s investors and maybe some people shopping for putters. Yar Golf was not a well known company and Dr. V wasn’t all that famous. She and the company are much better known now than before. What made the article interesting was the twists and turns the story took as Hannan tried to get to the bottom of it. If a transgender person were somehow outed in a story with great news value that really affected the lives of a lot of people, I think a lot of readers would be more forgiving. Here, the story was weird and diverting but not newsy, and that’s part of what gives the impression that Vanderbilt was outed carelessly just for the sake of entertainment. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/192 "2014-01-28T21:36:15Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > They probably would have told Hannan how ugly the “a chill went up my spine” comment sounded and told him he shouldn’t out Vanderbilt to people who knew her. Neither of those things was necessary in the story and they both made Hannan and Grantland look insensitive. And none of this is particularly specific to transgender issues. It could apply to any complex social issue. What difference does it makes if the reporter tells her investors, or they read about it in the article later on? > [@Marley23](#): > > That’s part of the problem: this wasn’t really in the public’s interest. It was entertainment. To me, this was a really interesting, weird story. But it was a diversion, not breaking news. How much “news” fits that narrow criteria. > [@Marley23](#): > > If a transgender person were somehow outed in a story with great news value that really affected the lives of a lot of people, I think a lot of readers would be more forgiving. Here, the story was weird and diverting but not newsy, and that’s part of what gives the impression that Vanderbilt was outed carelessly just for the sake of entertainment. I doubt people would be okay with it in any sense. These are the same people that read an article about a fraud who lied to her investors, threatened a reporter, then committed suicide (all of which happened before the article was published), and then focus is on why this reporter attempted to reveal what he learned to another person involved in the story? He couldn’t have even been sure he was “outing” her given he has no idea what the investor knows. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/193 "2014-01-28T21:43:33Z")
Brickbacon, I would hold the same standard for transexual and not. If information is immaterial and only serves to appeal to purient interests then keep it to yourself or at least be honest about it. If the reporter becomes a driver of the story being reported on then it is important for a reporter to be aware of that. If a reporter uncovered that a business figure being written about was sexually abused by his father as a child, even had changed his name to escape additional family contact, I would not assume that such information needed to be shared with his business partners/investors and written about after his death unless it was pertinent to some greater public good. Even if the man was a crook. And even then, after death and with some greater public good, it would need to be presented with some sensitivity. Some information is private unless the individual decides to share it or revealing it serves a significant greater good. Transexual or not. She is dead now, true. Whether or not being casually outed to people who knew her was a factor in that, whether she became worried, rationally or irrationally, that Hannan would out her in the piece (even if he said he wouldn’t, why should she have believed him?), we will never know. Just like we will never know much of her story. The incuriosity of the article about _that_ after presenting the writer as being so driven by curiosity, is striking. The final piece could have been written with an awareness of the preconceptions that Hannan, the editorial staff, and the likely intitial readership of an article aboout golf clubs all shared. It could have addressed those preconceptions. ---
**Author:** ![brickbacon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/898d66/32.png) [@brickbacon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/brickbacon)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/194 "2014-01-28T21:58:17Z")
> [@DSeid](#): > > I would hold the same standard for transexual and not. If information is immaterial and only serves to appeal to purient interests then keep it to yourself or at least be honest about it. If the reporter becomes a driver of the story being reported on then it is important for a reporter to be aware of that. Read Simmons’ account. They were aware he was the driver of the story, hence it being written the way it was. The fact she was transsexual was material and did little to appeal to prurient interest. I don’t know why you keep saying that given I have demonstrated that the revelation was not enough for them to even publish the article. If it meant so little to them at the time, why do you keep alleging that that was their intent despite evidence to the contrary? > [@DSeid](#): > > If a reporter uncovered that a business figure being written about was sexually abused by his father as a child, even had changed his name to escape additional family contact, I would not assume that such information needed to be shared with his business partners/investors and written about after his death unless it was pertinent to some greater public good. Are you really comparing changing your name to actively hide from your abuser to changing your name in order to live life as a different gender? Additionally, you are ignoring the fact that she materially benefited from that lack of disclosure while her investors suffered. The same cannot likely be said for someone who changes their name to avoid abusers. > [@DSeid](#): > > The incuriosity of the article about _that_ after presenting the writer as being so driven by curiosity, is striking. It’s not incuriousity, it’s being stonewalled. Exactly what else could Caleb have done? Should he show up at her funeral asking tough questions? Should he badger her relatives and friends? Wouldn’t that have pissed off your side even more? ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 10:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/195 "2014-01-28T22:05:54Z")
> [@brickbacon](#): > > What difference does it makes if the reporter tells her investors, or they read about it in the article later on? Because of the way it made Hannan look, for starters, and because it could’ve changed the course of the story during the course of his reporting. As a hypothetical, imagine that Kinney demands his money back and the company goes out of business. Yes, that could have happened anyway. But it’s different if it happens as the result of completed reporting. It also just wasn’t Hanan’s business because it didn’t matter to that aspect of his reporting: he’d discovered that Kinney had invested money with someone who had phony degrees, and that matters. That the person was TG didn’t matter. By handling it that way, he made it sound like he felt Vanderbilt’s status was part of her fraud. It wasn’t, and that implied some ugly things about people who are transgender. To me, there’s a very narrow reason it matters to this story that Vanderbilt was transgender and that’s not it. > [@](#): > > How much “news” fits that narrow criteria. A lot. Which is fine; there’s more to journalism than breaking news and there always has been. But this is more entertainment than news. > [@](#): > > I doubt people would be okay with it in any sense. I think we’ll have to agree to disagree, then. I’m not saying nobody would object if the circumstances were different and the story had more news value. But I think that’s one of the reasons people are reacting to the story the way they are. Hannan reported on a company and a person they’d probably never heard of, and in the process he outed her as transgender and then reported that she’d committed suicide. The story was basically just a curiosity, so I understand why some readers would feel the transgender person is being treated as a freak and her death is being trivialized. I don’t think any of that was intentional, but I get it. If this was about something the public really needed to know, the cost might seem worth, or closer to worth it, to some people. > [@](#): > > These are the same people that read an article about a fraud who lied to her investors, threatened a reporter, then committed suicide (all of which happened before the article was published), and then focus is on why this reporter attempted to reveal what he learned to another person involved in the story? He couldn’t have even been sure he was “outing” her given he has no idea what the investor knows. I agree that some people are kind of overlooking Vanderbilt’s wrongdoing to focus on Hannan’s mistakes, but that doesn’t make his mistakes irrelevant. Regardless of Vanderbilt’s other actions, Hannan wasn’t responsible with a sensitive facet of her private life that was not central to his story. ---
**Author:** ![DSeid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dseid/32/20194_2.png) [@DSeid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DSeid)\ **Post date:** [January 28, 2014, 10:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/196 "2014-01-28T22:30:36Z")
I read Simmon’s account including > [@](#): > > Had we pushed Caleb to include a deeper perspective about his own feelings, and his own fears of culpability, that would have softened those criticisms. Then again, Caleb had spent the piece presenting himself as a curious reporter, nothing more. Had he shoehorned his own perspective/feelings/emotions into the ending, it could have been perceived as unnecessarily contrived. Hannan’s role was presented as “curious reporter, nothing more” - not as an actor in the events that occured. The transexualism not being enough by itself to make the article sensational enough to warrant publication, that it was not entertaining enough without a death too, in no way supports a contention that the transexualism was not used for purient entertainment appeal. Yes, I am making the comparison. Both that history in my imaginary story and the reality in this case are parts of someone’s past that they wanted kept private and that revealing served no more public good than entertainment and that the reporter had no business revealing to people of the individual’s acquaintance while alive or in a written peice after death. A reporter is not obligated to reveal all information found. Some information they have no right to reveal unless the greater good is seriously being served. Yes, if someone has a history of depression and suicide attempts, possibly related to something traumatic in their past, then digging about that trauma and revealing it to others is not something that should be done without an analysis as to what makes the damage that may do worth it. Are you claiming that the transexual history not being known by investors harmed them? That not sharing that was part of Essay’s fraud? Again, it was possible to share that she was not a Vanderbilt and that her credentials were false without sharing _why_ she changed her name. The incuriosity being referenced is the incuriosity about _his own role_ in the events and the outcomes. Like Essay’s full past it won’t have defintive answers, but that did not stop him from asking the questions about her past, and being frustrated over not getting answers. About this there was no questioning. It might have distracted from the character of curious reporter, nothing more. The stonewalling in this case was not needed because he did not ask himself any of the hard questions. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/197 "2014-01-29T02:17:06Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > Yes, and that’s why he shouldn’t have written it that way. But I don’t think that’s what he was attempting to say. Why? I’m assuming you don’t know Hannan personally, so what is it about the article that indicates to you that he didn’t really mean it that way? Are you just giving him the benefit of the doubt? Because speaking for myself here, I find that difficult to do considering that he did out Dr. V to Kinney while working on this article. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 1:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/198 "2014-01-29T13:53:17Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > Why? I’m assuming you don’t know Hannan personally, so what is it about the article that indicates to you that he didn’t really mean it that way? Are you just giving him the benefit of the doubt? Because speaking for myself here, I find that difficult to do considering that he did out Dr. V to Kinney while working on this article. I’m giving him some benefit of the doubt and recognizing that when people really set out to bash the transgender - as some posters here do once in a while, for instance - they’re much worse than Hannan was. Hannan came away thinking this: > [@](#): > > Yet despite all that, the main emotion I felt while reading her desperate, last-ditch email was sadness. Although there were times when I had been genuinely thrilled with the revelation that Dr. V’s official narrative didn’t line up with reality, there was nothing satisfying about where the story had ended up. People had been hurt by Dr. V’s lies, but she was the person who seemed to be suffering most. ---
**Author:** ![Lamia](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/8e7dd6/32.png) [@Lamia](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lamia)\ **Post date:** [January 29, 2014, 11:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/199 "2014-01-29T23:35:15Z")
> [@Marley23](#): > > I’m giving him some benefit of the doubt and recognizing that when people really set out to bash the transgender - as some posters here do once in a while, for instance - they’re much worse than Hannan was. I didn’t say I thought Hannan set out to bash the transgender. I said I thought he was attempting to shock or titillate his readers. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [January 30, 2014, 12:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491/200 "2014-01-30T00:04:00Z")
> [@Lamia](#): > > I didn’t say I thought Hannan set out to bash the transgender. I said I thought he was attempting to shock or titillate his readers. Other people in this thread have taken a more negative view. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491.md?page=9) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalist-outs-transgender-con-man-while-investigating-story-unethical-or-not/679491.md?page=11)