• by Tom Siebert , October 16, 2006

Public figures shouldn't expect to get much privacy except when it comes to their sex life--and even then only if they're gay. That was the key takeaway message from last Thursday's Reuters Newsmakers panel, "Public Figures, Private Lives," which featured a potpourri of bold-faced names from the reporting and legal side of the media establishment discussing what's (mostly) fair game and what's (rarely) out of bounds in this day and age of increasing tabloid journalism both in print and online and decreasing discretion pretty much everywhere.

The panelists were a who's who on the hit lists of celebrities and politicians far and wide: Slate's Editor in Chief Jacob Weisberg; Splash News CEO Gary Morgan; commentator, consultant and former Recording Industry Association of America CEO Hilary Rosen; first amendment expert Floyd Abrams; and American Media chief editorial director Bonnie Fuller. Reuters reporter Paul Holmes moderated.

Morgan was the most animated and entertaining of the lot, calling the symbiotic relationship between celebrities and the press an "Axis of Evil [that] none of us are capable of stopping."

He pretty much summed up the panel's feelings, which were that there is now a culture of "superelites who have made it to the top by using publicity, and then when they get there want to be left alone." Fuller said that if celebrities are marketing their lives for financial gain or positive publicity--offering, respectively, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, and Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes as examples--they shouldn't expect the press's interest to stop there.

She also revealed, to some murmurs in the crowd, that American Media polygraphs its sources for magazines like the Star, to make sure they're not making stuff up.

Weisberg said the "prestige press no longer plays a gatekeeper function in setting standards," yet later was adamant that a person's choice of sexuality was still kept rightly off limits and that outing a closeted gay person remains taboo, no matter what their field or public persona, because "hypocrisy is in the eye of the beholder."

This launched a spirited debate between journalists in the audience--mostly online writers who feel protecting secretly gay politicians who bash gays to further their careers should be exposed--and the panel. When pressed, Abrams made a curious comparison between closeted gays and rape victims, while Fuller said her publications would not out anyone, and claimed she didn't know Lance Bass from N'Sync was gay until she read it in People ("then she was one of the last," joked someone at the cocktail reception afterwards).

The lone voice for ambiguity on the question was Rosen--who has lobbied in Washington for gay and lesbian rights, and said that asking a politician about his or her sexuality was a fair question, because "You don't get to be your commercials and that's all" and the "real issue is whether people get to be hypocrites and get privacy."

But the final word should go to Splash News' Morgan, who said he knew exactly where to draw the line: "When you get sued."