Comment by tschwimmer
6 years ago
I don't disagree with your characterization that the obligation of the journalist is to inform, but what is the marginal utility of revealing his whole name? It's hard for me to come up with anything.
I wouldn't be opposed to the story running under a fictional name, even though that would probably not be to Scott's liking either.
I think this is the critical point. The marginal utility is quite clear though: Readers can check all sorts of claims for themselves by looking up public details about the person. E.g. are they really a psychiatrist working at X as the reporter claims.
In the specific case though, given a really well established pseudonymous online identity, that is the central subject of the article, the marginal utility of the additional information you can check seems uniquely low. At least if the subject is just the pseudonymous activity of the author.
Maybe there's some case to publish his name if he's misrepresenting himself. It doesn't seem like that's the case. If the journalist finds discrepancies he can report on them too.
You're saying we should just trust the journalists to be truthful, no need for us to be able to check the journalists work.
He already has a sort-of fictional name. He's also a public figure with a substantial following. I think for the journalist reporting on him, this is a no brainer - identify the thing you're talking about. At the end of the day, I'm not some expert it journalistic ethics - maybe they don't have to publish his name. But the notion that they're committing some grave moral offense or journalistic malpractice by publishing it over his objections seems completely misplaced. It's journalists' job to publish things over subject's objections.
Suppose the National Review were doing a piece on a labor campaign and decided to publish the name of a major employee leader who had maintained his anonymity to protect his job. Would you be so blase about their journalistic ethics? After all, publishing true information about someone even if they don't want it published is just journalism at its finest.
It's not the sort of work the National Review does so I'm not sure I really understand the hypothetical. Do journalists sometimes omit details to protect subjects or sources from harm? Sure. But the bar for harm is usually higher than 'the subject wouldn't like it'.