Keep gossip out of politics

SUE NEALES, Mercury, July 11, 2009 11:47am

SO the world now knows that Nick McKim and fellow Greens MP Cassy O’Connor are a couple.

And that two former partners have been left distraught by the decision, while the couple themselves are coping as best as they can.

Now the hot news has disappeared from the papers and airwaves, it leaves some interesting questions in its wake.

Is it really any of our business — either the media’s or the public’s — how or with whom Mr McKim and Ms O’Connor are living?

Did we — the voting public — need to know?

Do we — as the providers of their public payroll salaries — have a right to know?

Should this type of private and personal knowledge really be published and broadcast through the media in the guise of political journalism?

And will knowing they are a couple make a difference to the way we vote? Or will it alter the way Ms O’Connor and Mr McKim do their jobs as Greens politicians?

Simply, has this sort of matter now become popularly regarded as serious political news?

After nearly 30 years of reporting politics in various parliaments around Australia and the world, my answer to all these questions is a resounding no. Read more here

And, the Jim Bacon case:

At other times, the local media has given some politicians plenty of latitude, out of compassion or even, paradoxically, respect for their privacy and potential impact on their families.

Probably the most famous case of compassionate non-reporting was in early 2004 when the Mercury and other Tasmanian media outlets agreed not to break the story of the diagnosis of lung cancer given to then-premier Jim Bacon, until he had had time to first inform his family.

It was an agreement that meant the news was broken first by a Canberra-based journalist linked to national Labor circles, rather than by the local media. And, despite great criticism within the journalism profession of this compact, most local editors say they would make the same decision again.

… And how Tasmanian Times vehemently disagreed:

http://www.oldtt.pixelkey.biz/jurassic/rodneybaconnews.html