Following the downfall and aftermath of the Eliot Spitzer saga this week was enough to make your head spin (if not recommend that all politicians be required to pour catnip on their cereal each morning).
In a matter of mere hours, the former New York attorney general was exposed and resigned. Soon after, the media had released the alias and then the real name of Spitzer’s favorite lady of the evening. Then, within another few milliseconds it seemed, the young woman’s MySpace address was being announced and broadcast (resulting in over a million hits), and, her music demo from the website was being played and “reviewed” by radio station morning shows.
Privacy, class, decorum and journalistic responsibility. All are terms, I am now convinced, that should be removed (at least for now) from Webster’s. Surely, the media’s current preoccupation with scandal and titillation is not what Marconi and Paley and other founding “forefathers” envisioned when they set original media tones and standards. When is enough enough?