Journalist outs transgender con man while investigating story - Unethical or not?

[Gary_T]

The key point here is that Dr. V was outed as a liar and a fraud. The transgender issue is an intriguing but irrelevant twist.

From the linked article: “The town’s lawyers also suspected that at one point she might have been known by a different name, and they asked her to reveal it. When she refused, the judge asked her to sign an affidavit saying she had always gone by Essay Anne Vanderbilt. She refused that request, too…” Naturally any reporter doing a story on this person is going to investigate that angle, to see if there was indeed a name change as suggested. And having found that to be the case, is going to include that information in the story.

The gender change is insignificant. Had it been Mary Krol who became Essay Anne Vanderbilt, or Stephen Krol who became Arthur James Vanderbilt, it would have been reported just like the transformation from Stephen Krol to Essay Anne Vanderbilt was. Unless one believes there is something inherently awful in being transgendered, there is no reason to hide the fact. The biggest fuss is being made by people like Gerri Jordan, with the "lesbian auto mechanic” comment, and those who think that just because one is transgender then one should be shielded from having all their lies fully exposed. The people getting their panties in a twist seem to be those who are inordinately focused on gender identity when that’s just an incidental detail. I see no sign that the author or any of the folks interviewed make a big deal out of it.

[Gary_T]

@Karrius

Because it has nothing to do with the story and leads to a culture that thinks of transgender people as “liars” and “dishonest” when it’s not at all true?

Twaddle. While the fact that the subject was transgender doesn’t really matter, the name change that reveals the transgendering is an important element of the story. And if one dare not show that a particular transgendered person was in fact a dishonest liar, how far do we take that approach? Should we refuse to report that a Mr. Garcia robbed a bank because then everyone will think that all Hispanics are thieves?

[Cognoscant]

I read this story before the accompanying articles by Bill Simmons and Christina Kahrl were included; I think I would have thought differently about the story if I’d seen those first.

My first thought was that this story was so very similar to another one about a con man who at the time was much more famous than “Dr. V”–Liz Carmichael of “Twentieth-Century Motors”, a company which in the 70’s claimed to have produced a 70mpg, three-wheeled car. Carmichael embezzled millions of dollars from investors for a car which only existed on paper, then went into hiding just before being convicted of several counts of mail fraud and grand theft. Before it became clear that Twentieth-Century Motors was little more than a front for a scam, Carmichael was being featured in national media as “one of the most powerful women in the auto business”.

During their investigation police uncovered evidence that Carmichael was a transgendered woman born under the name Jerry Dean Michael. At that time the same media which had earlier been praising Carmichael had no qualms about outing her as transgendered. Police at the time claimed at the time they thought Carmichael might have “reverted” to her previous life as a man to avoid detection. They were wrong: Carmichael had been taking hormone treatments for some time and was still living as a woman when she was eventually captured.

I think the same issue that affected the Liz Carmichael case affects this one, namely; was the subject’s transgender status relevant to the story? In the Dr. V story, I say absolutely not–it shouldn’t have been brought up. Lying about qualifications and equipment testing, sure. LGBT status, no way. The Carmichael case, I can see a little bit; part of the reason Carmichael didn’t talk about her past was because she had had fraud convictions under the name of Jerry Dean Michael and as a result shouldn’t have been permitted to own a car company at all. I could see the police thinking, Carmichael simply took on a disguise to hide his past problems, and this disguise happened to be that of a woman…only that wasn’t true and Carmichael really was transgendered.

All in all, the Dr. V story does seem shamefully done. Concentrating on the people who were duped by an allegedly “perfect putter” (I play golf, I can assure you there is no such thing) and why they got duped would have been more of a story than harassing Dr. V. Reading the stories of the people who got duped by Liz Carmichael makes for fascinating reading–they really, really did think that this non-existent car made in a non-existent warehouse was going to revolutionize the auto industry, and some of them were so duped they claimed they were going to pool their remaining assets and try to build this fantasy car themselves!

[Ravenman]

@Cognoscant

In the Dr. V story, I say absolutely not–it shouldn’t have been brought up.

Honest questions here: in your view, was her suicide relevant to the story?

If so, do you think that her identity as a transgendered person is relevant to her suicide?

In my view, both answers are yes. I’m curious as to whether you see it differently, and if so, why.

[phreesh]

I also don’t have a problem with her transgender status being reported in the piece. I do think her death was handled too coolly and should have been explored to greater depth, but I don’t think it’s out of line to report on a liar’s true identity. I mean, she did give a completely false name and career. IMHO, she opened the door to further scrutiny and the reporter reported the truth.

Even if she hadn’t killed herself, I would have supported him outing her in the piece because she had told material untruths about her identity already. The lie was a large part of the story. If you can’t speak about her gender switch, why can you speak about the lies around her education and work experience?

Any story about hidden identities would (and should) have a sentence like, “Dave Smith, who was born Billy Thomas…” in it.

[Cognoscant]

@Ravenman

Honest questions here: in your view, was her suicide relevant to the story?

If so, do you think that her identity as a transgendered person is relevant to her suicide?

In my view, both answers are yes. I’m curious as to whether you see it differently, and if so, why.

The suicide, I think yes. I think any story of this nature needs some form of closure (or, at least, an explanation of why closure hasn’t been found). I think if the story had ended with investigators closing in on Dr. V and then the article abruptly cut off with no explanation it would have been a very confusing one. The suicide was shocking, yes, but given Dr. V’s previous attempts at suicide unfortunately not a surprising ending.

I’m torn on the second question. Her LGBT status may have been relevant; we know, sadly, that the LGBT population is more likely to commit suicide than the “straight” population. Or…maybe not. Dr. V was someone who had attempted suicide before and was potentially facing a long jail sentence. Many people in the same situation have taken the same way out, regardless of their orientation. So I’m just not certain.

[Nanoda]

@levdrakon

Her status made a chill run up his spine. He outed her to investors. She made it clear at the outset the story should be about the invention, not the inventor.

He’s a piece of shit.

Interesting - they reference that line in their followup / apology.

[JohnT]

The issue, imho, was that it wasn’t the journalist’s place to out the woman to her investor during the course of the investigation. This, imho, is pretty unforgivable.

The entire piece sounds clueless about the issues of transgenderism, and the last three paragraphs are stunningly tone deaf in their lack of concern about her suicide.

It took about a year to write, and it is obvious that the author went from “Let’s find out about this putter and the person who invented it” to “Whoa! This girl was once a guy and nobody knows! Let’s make the article focus on that!”

A shoddy piece of work. The editor (Bill Simmons) should have apologized (which he did.)

[Ravenman]

@JohnT

It took about a year to write, and it is obvious that the author went from “Let’s find out about this putter and the person who invented it” to “Whoa! This girl was once a guy and nobody knows! Let’s make the article focus on that!”

I genuinely disagree that that was the focus. Maybe I’ll read it again, but I recall her identity came up substantively three times in the article: the guy from Arizona who made the insinuations; the part about the background and her being a mechanic, etc.; and the part about talking to the investor. I would have to look again, but I bet you that MIT and the stealth bomber each were raised more than her gender identity, but I don’t consider MIT or the stealth bomber to be the “focus” of the article.

[Karrius]

@Gary_T

Twaddle. While the fact that the subject was transgender doesn’t really matter, the name change that reveals the transgendering is an important element of the story. And if one dare not show that a particular transgendered person was in fact a dishonest liar, how far do we take that approach? Should we refuse to report that a Mr. Garcia robbed a bank because then everyone will think that all Hispanics are thieves?

That’s not what I said, at all. Just because someone is a bad person, you don’t have full right to publish their life story as you will. I see nothing wrong with reporting on someone who’s dishonest, I DO see something wrong with outing people both in private and in public as if it’s some sort of shocking twist to prove how dishonest they are. People do have a right to privacy, even people you don’t like. In addition, a good journalist should consider how their reporting plays into a wider culture as a whole. That would involve responsibility and ethics, however, something journalists like to toss aside in exchange for whatever will draw the most attention.

[Gary_T]

@Cognoscant

…was the subject’s transgender status relevant to the story? In the Dr. V story, I say absolutely not–it shouldn’t have been brought up. Lying about qualifications and equipment testing, sure. LGBT status, no way.

The thing is, it wasn’t brought up as a salient point per se. What was brought up was the name change, which was relevant. The LGBT status is being assumed from that.

[UTejas]

I think the biggest mistake was conflating transgender status as part of the con man dishonesty and building it into the overall mystery. I would argue that living as a transgender woman instead of a deeply unhappy man is perhaps the most honest thing Dr. V did with her life.

[Cognoscant]

@Gary_T

The thing is, it wasn’t brought up as a salient point per se. What was brought up was the name change, which was relevant. The LGBT status is being assumed from that.

I think it’s a little naive to think writing that someone changed their name from “Stephen” to “Essay Anne” would not be construed by 100% of the readers as an indication of transgender status. I mean, if you’re going to talk about someone lying about their name, there was a perfect opportunity to do so in this story…this person claimed have the last name of Vanderbilt and be part of the famed family (and thus would have been assumed to have access to large family assets) but her name was not Vanderbilt and had no connection to the family. The author could have stopped with that deception and not brought in the LGBT aspect at all.

[Una_Persson]

@UTejas

To be honest, I’m pretty surprised at the amount of misgendering of Dr. V in this thread, including its title.

So am I. I’m pretty fucking disgusted by it myself. :rolleyes:

[CarnalK]

ISTM, if you are trying to keep your sexual history private you shouldn’t become a con artist and claim to be a wealthy heiress. Just a thought.

[Sam_Lowry]

@Isilder

“The pitch of her voice was strange, too — deeper than expected. She said it was the result of a collapsed larynx she had suffered in a car crash.”"

Her deceit touched on the topic. she opened the door to it.

Do you think that all transgender people are inherently deceitful? Should every transgender person introduce themself like “Hello my name is Allison Smith, but I am transgender and I used to be a man named Michael Smith”? I don’t think so. Her lying about her credentials, and her hiding the fact that she is trangender are two separate issues.

@Snowboarder_Bo

I’m unsure as to exact timeline here tho. It seems that the article was just published a week or so ago; is that correct?

If it is correct, and this “Dr. V” killed herself before the publication of the article, I cannot understand what anyone thinks that Hannen did wrong.

If that is incorrect, and “Dr. V” killed herself after publication, I might be able to understand the viewpoint that Hannen did something wrong, but I don’t think I’d share it.

If I understand the timeline correctly, this is what happened:
[ul]
[li]Hannen found out that Dr. V was transgender[/li][li]Hannen told her investors “that the woman he thought was an aerospace engineer had once been a man, and a mechanic.”[/li][li]Dr. V committed suicide[/li][li]The article was published[/li][/ul]

So people are upset about her being outed in the article, and it could have been written more sensitively, or without outing her at all, like this edit of the article shows. But the wrong thing seems to be that Hannen outed her to the investors, which might have contributed to her suicide.

It’s true that she might have committed suicide because the truth that she was a mechanic and not an engineer came out. People do commit suicide sometimes when their frauds are exposed. But 41% of transgender peoplehave attempted to commit suicide. I want to emphasize this, because it is staggering and depressing. 41% of transgender people have tried to commit suicide. Hopefully in the future, transgender people won’t face discrimination, and revealing that someone is transgender would be no different than revealing that she was left-handed. But as it is now, they face a lot of prejudice, and I don’t think they should be outed if possible.

@muldoonthief

So how should have the journalist have reported that Dr. V. was born under a different name, with a past that didn’t at all match what she was claiming? If she had been born biologically female Stephanie Krol, no one would be batting an eye about her entire past being revealed - it’s clearly very relevant to the story, especially when the subject of the story is trying to get investors, based on her non-existent past.

What if she had another reason for changing her name? This person who wrote this edit of the articlesuggested this hypothetical:

[QUOTE=S.I. Rosenbaum]
If Vanderbilt had cut ties to her family and changed her name after a horrific rape by a relative, that would “explain” why her past was a mystery, but the destructive power of disclosing that information would probably outweigh any compelling public good it could do.
[/QUOTE]

Or suppose that she had been in an abusive relationship with a partner, and changed her name to escape that. Would that be relevant to the story, and something that should be disclosed?

[Una_Persson]

@Ravenman

I think the Bill Simmons apology makes some pretty good points, mainly: they should have had someone from the transgendered community take a look at the article, the ending on the suicide was unnecessarily cold, and I think the idea to include more background about suicide and transgendered people was very much needed; and a couple other thoughts written there were well-considered, but too late.

Grantland has at least one “out and proud” transsexual writer on it at the time this was in editing. No one even thought to shoot off an e-mail to her.

BTW, since you asked, the misgendering was here:

What began as a story about a brilliant woman with a new invention had turned into the tale of a troubled man who had invented a new life for himself. Yet the biggest question remained unanswered: Had Dr. V created a great golf club or merely a great story?

In his own words, Hannan points out that he doesn’t consider her to be a woman, or even a transgender woman, she’s a “troubled man.”

[Ravenman]

One more thought from my point of view: I have a hard time thinking of other issues that I would say should have been excluded from a investigative piece like that.

Let’s say that the story was about John Smith who invented a special driver, but something was fishy about his claims of education and professional experience. I’m trying to think of other things about a person that could be construed as invasions of his privacy: maybe he goes to church every day. Maybe he’s a serial adulterer. Maybe he’s turned his life around after being a drug addict. Maybe he spent time in jail for something. Good or bad, I think all of those are pretty fair game for an investigative piece like that.

The only thing I can think of that a journalist should probably not include in such an article would be something like, Mr. Smith fathered 10 children who he never sees. I think that’s gone far afield because it could potentially impact the lives of people (the children) in ways the journalist couldn’t control.

If people can explain in more detail why, exactly, they believe the transgendered issue is one that the journalist should have excluded that issue from his article, I’d appreciate the help on understanding that point of view. But as it stands, I’m just not seeing why that issue is so out of bounds, but my hypothetical Mr. Smith issues would not be (in my view).

ETA: Thanks, Una, I must have glossed over that part.

[Una_Persson]

@Sam_Lowry

It’s true that she might have committed suicide because the truth that she was a mechanic and not an engineer came out. People do commit suicide sometimes when their frauds are exposed. But 41% of transgender peoplehave attempted to commit suicide. I want to emphasize this, because it is staggering and depressing. 41% of transgender people have tried to commit suicide. Hopefully in the future, transgender people won’t face discrimination, and revealing that someone is transgender would be no different than revealing that she was left-handed. But as it is now, they face a lot of prejudice, and I don’t think they should be outed if possible.

And another thing that the vast majority of cisgender people will never understand, except on an abstract level, is that when a transperson is “deep stealth” for years, decades even, being openly and broadly outed is devastating. You think you’ve finally put all the awesomely painful, destructive, agonizing shit of your old gender identity behind you, and then suddenly, pow - you’re having to face it all over again.

It’s actually easier when you’re new to it. I’ve been publicly transitioned for 19 months now, and it’s rare that my status ever comes up. I used to be fearless and would tell anyone who I met, even if they didn’t ask. Now I’m still out there, giving speeches and appearing in the media, but in my social life I don’t bring it up - ever.

So this week I’m at the University teaching one of my courses, and due to an error my “boy name” was printed on one of the Department handouts. And sure enough, a student got up and asked me about the handout in class, and where the boy-named professor was who was teaching my class. And even though I’ve been on local radio, in the paper, and I’ve lectured to more than a thousand people directly, I had to stop…because it stunned me. For a split second, it took all the wind out of my sails. I greatly identified with this scene:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JrCle0tteu8 (YouTube Video with sound, work-safe)

And I had to force myself to plaster on my Barbie Doll smile and say “yes I am!”

I can imagine that Dr. V, whatever her other misdeeds or crimes, was in the same situation, and it had nothing to do with fear of prison or financial ruin. It might have, true, but really…just being outed from deep stealth is reason enough. Something that Mr. Hannan would have known if he would have had the God damned common decency to say “hey, I’m now writing this article in a way such that her transgender status is a significant part of it…maybe I should learn about this.” The rest of his article could have been a good one on pseudoscience and fraud in golf, something I’ve helped Cecil with once before. Instead, he went for adding the salacious “look at the crazy tranny” angle, and it was a major writing fail.

[Sam_Lowry]

@Ravenman

One more thought from my point of view: I have a hard time thinking of other issues that I would say should have been excluded from a investigative piece like that.

Let’s say that the story was about John Smith who invented a special driver, but something was fishy about his claims of education and professional experience. I’m trying to think of other things about a person that could be construed as invasions of his privacy: maybe he goes to church every day. Maybe he’s a serial adulterer. Maybe he’s turned his life around after being a drug addict. Maybe he spent time in jail for something. Good or bad, I think all of those are pretty fair game for an investigative piece like that.

The only thing I can think of that a journalist should probably not include in such an article would be something like, Mr. Smith fathered 10 children who he never sees. I think that’s gone far afield because it could potentially impact the lives of people (the children) in ways the journalist couldn’t control.

If people can explain in more detail why, exactly, they believe the transgendered issue is one that the journalist should have excluded that issue from his article, I’d appreciate the help on understanding that point of view. But as it stands, I’m just not seeing why that issue is so out of bounds, but my hypothetical Mr. Smith issues would not be (in my view).

ETA: Thanks, Una, I must have glossed over that part.

I’m not a journalist, and I’m not exactly sure what the line should be. But I would say that we are responsible for our actions, so if a past action is relevant to the story, then it would not be unethical to bring that up. So if someone has a history of fraud, or adultery, or drug use, and it’s relevant to the story, then it would be okay to include.

But if it’s something that happened to them, or an attribute of themselves that wasn’t chosen, then the writer should not include it if at all possible. So something like if the subject had been in an abusive relationship, or had a treated mental illness, or is transgender. That’s not to say that it should absolutely be forbidden to reveal these things if it’s truly necessary, but the journalists and editors should be much more careful and sensitive.