Cincinnati Enquirer-Privacy and Confidentiality

Jean val Jean receives confidential grace and mercy

I received a note this morning from a friend asking me to comment on the recent revelations in the Cincinnati Enquirer of the young man who shot himself while at high school. It seems that the family and school requested privacy but the paper and some other news outlets revealed his name anyway.

The rush of individuals and news outlets revealing private and even confidential conversations and activities seems to have started in earnest with the Watergate revelations. After that, along with the internet, all boundaries and ideas of the right to privacy are rare or nonexistent.

First allow me to differentiate between confidential and private. Confidentiality, in my mind, is a legal and ethical conviction that any person with a position of authority and power must keep totally confidential anything he/she learns about a person under his/her care or responsibility.

This was developed first in the church because Pastors and Priest heard the confessions of penitents. If those confessions were to be shared then the Pastoral/Penitent relationship would be compromise and future penitents refuse to confess because of fears about public shame and retribution. This idea was adopted by Physicians, Therapists, Counselors, Nurses, etc and now it is a Federal offense for Medical personnel to violate a Patient's confidentiality.

Many Protestant Ministers have tended to violate these restrictions. For example, when President Clinton was caught in adultery he asked at least two Protestant Ministers to help him. Anything that went on between them verbally or even meeting times was supposed to be kept strictly confidential. However, it was not. Confidential events, discussions and struggles were revealed verbally to news people and others. It even appeared in public writings and TV discussion groups much to the shame of the perpetrators. Those revelations damaged the credibility of all Pastors.I will never trust those men again.

Privacy is different. There are moral and ethical considerations to keep private discussions and private matters from others but few news organizations respect the wishes of individuals and families even in situations such as death and tragedy. It seems that the compulsive drive for a good story and selling papers drives most decisions of what to print. A desire for privacy among private parties, not politicians or entertainment gurus, is lost in the shuffle.

It seems to me that the Enquirer mad a strategic mistake by refusing to respect the wishes of the family. It has given the paper a bad reputation in the home town and they are fighting desperately for circulation increases. This event cannot have built confidence among the readers that the Enquirer is a trustworthy news organization. 

Sometimes I hear of small groups asking for confidentiality among its members. The proper term is probably privacy because it is friend to friend not a Pastoral Counselor.However, it is immoral to share another person's private story but not illegal. Gossip is wrong!