How Far is Too Far?

As the Kwame Kilpatrick saga comes to an end with the final consequences for Christine Beatty, it forced me to think as a journalist about the vast coverage that surrounded the affair. As both a student journalist and a citizen of Detroit, I had mixed feelings about the entire situation. I watched the stories, text messages, and continuous police investigation take place over the beginning of 2008 and come to end with Kilpatrick ending up in jail. I read the reports of how his family couldn't go anywhere without the press following them around and asking questions about their affairs. I felt saddened that one family would have to endure so much, especially the children, but also remembered the role of journalists during any kind of affair with a public figure.

One of the last major players in the case to be tried was Christine Beatty, one of the former mayor's top aides as well as the woman he was involved with outside of his marriage. The coverage of her was not as expansive as the mayor's, but even her hearing for a possible release early from jail was covered live on the Detroit Free Press' site. A legal hearing is open to the public but, there were stories of news crews outside of their homes for 22-24 hours a day. At what point do journalists invade someone's privacy beyond a professional measure? I know this is a dicey situation and I would never want to take a side on the matter, but I think many citizens had the same idea throughout the saga. Can a public official's child go to school without running the risk of being followed by the press? And is it really the goal of journalism to document a spouse in the grocery store while he/she shops? This scandal brought a lot of those questions to my mind, and reading an article about one of the final prosecuting steps for Beatty rushed back memories of the stories and coverage over the summer. At what point do we overstep the line between journalism and the invasion of true privacy?
http://freep.com/article/20090316/NEWS01/90316004/Beatty+++I+m+ready+to+go+home+