The Power of Life and Death

The sad case of Art Teele, the Florida Commissioner who committed suicide last week, gets sadder still. The reporter who broke both Florida state law and the tenets of his employer forced the man to take his life and caused immeasurable pain to his family.

Here's background:

Teele supporters said they are particularly upset with the coverage of Teele's political and personal life over the past year. It was within that time that Teele was arrested three times, indicted on both state and federal charges and convicted of threatening a Miami-Dade County police officer.

Protesters are also upset over the 14-page New Times article published the day Teele took his own life. The cover story, which is entitled "Tales of Teele -- Sleaze Stories," is mostly a re-printing of a timeline kept by police investigators, who followed Teele as part of a corruption investigation.

There were also unsubstantiated reports of homosexual activity that, regardless if they were true or not, were not even remotely part of the story. That is where I have a major issue. If a politician is dirty, he deserves to be excoriated by the media, that is a major part of their job. But where does an investigation into the facts end and a smear job begin?

The media see no issue with this and have backed the reporter, going so far as to demand the Miami Herald rescind his firing.

Reporters must learn that the words they write have meaning to someone. I have written thousands of posts at this site and have never written anything that is likely to cause harm to an individual. Many bloggers have standards that would never allow them to cause harm to those that have not done something to bring that harm, upon themselves. Unfortunately, not all bloggers feel this way.

As we've seen this week, major media scions have not gotten the word that there is a line that should never be crossed. Politicians are fair game, that is the nature of the business. But, they are fair game to a certain point. That point was crossed in this case, and in fact the media is supporting a man who broke the law to get a story about a man who was accused of breaking the law:

Just hours after Teele shot himself in the lobby of the Herald, DeFede was fired after he told the newspaper's publisher that he had recorded a phone call with Teele without the late commissioner's permission. Recording without both parties being informed is against the law in Florida and it is also against The Miami Herald's policy.

The MSM had better wake up and see that they have an awesome power in their hands, a power that may well control life and death. The idea of gotcha journalism, or in some cases blind partisanship, forces a reporter to pry so deep into the lives of their targets and the consequences they face are nil.