by Terry Poulton
"I was trained to think you've got to write what you find, warts and all, if you believe it to be accurate. But when I did that, it wasn't too popular."
The wry understatement comes from Fox Butterfield, The New York Times reporter who ignited a firestorm of criticism with his "wart"-laden profile of the Palm Beach woman who accused William Kennedy Smith of raping her. His article also broke with mainstream press tradition by naming the alleged victim.
But the 21-year Times veteran and former Beijing bureau chief had a surprise for the hordes of colleagues who besieged him: He didn't name her.
That was done by Times personnel at what Butterfield calls "a stratospheric level" of authority after they saw NBC News shatter the taboo. And they didn't even tell Butterfield he was making media history vicariously.
"I had been instructed to leave her name out," Butterfield recalls, "and I was still out of town." So the man who'd soon be at the eye of a hurricane of journalistic and public debate had to learn what was published under his byline the same way everyone else did — by reading the paper.
How does Butterfield feel in retrospect? "I'm certainly upset that I got so many people upset. . . . But that [identifying her] was a decision that was entirely out of my hands. . . . I stand by the actual story I wrote because it's factually accurate. Nobody I know of has criticized us for inaccuracy."
But slams did come hard and fast for the facts Butterfield dug up from public records — the woman's traffic tickets, scholastic records, mother's marital status and, most of all, the illegitimacy of her 3-year-old daughter. Insult was added to injury in the views of many when the profile also included gossip about the woman's drinking and dating habits and the now-famous "little wild streak" attributed to her by an unnamed high school acquaintance.
Typical of the critics is James Ledbetter, who termed the profile "vile" in his Village Voice column and, in an interview with FineLine, said his chief criticism was not the naming of the woman, but the nature of the details published about her. "That, to me, was far more damaging . . . and just shoddy, sexist journalism."
Butterfield calls much of the collegial criticism "a lot of rot . . . from otherwise good reporters." The accusation "that we threw in all the dirt we could get" irks him and the four other staffers who researched the profile. "There was far more potentially damaging material out there that didn't get used," he says, "because we couldn't verify it until after deadline."
Arguably the most sensational of this material was that the woman's father was arrested for allegedly attempting to burn down a house while she and her mother were in it — an incident, Butterfield points out, that was printed by the Boston Herald three days earlier and provoked no response at all. "The crucial difference," he says, "seems to be that that paper didn't name her.
"But a lot of what I [perceived] in all this angry reaction," says Butterfield, "is that we shouldn't have written about her because it wasn't 'politically correct.' So if the facts — which, by the way, we gathered not by so-called peephole journalism but through public records and ordinary legwork — were taking us in the 'wrong' direction, we shouldn't have written them.
"If this had been Gary Hart we were writing about, they'd have applauded us for finding out who he was. But because she was a woman who, unlike the Central Park jogger, was not [deemed to be] above reproach, we should have kept things such as her hanging around in bars or being an unwed mother out of the story."
The most troubling aspect of the media feeding frenzy for the Boston-based Butterfield is what he calls "two canards. One is that I have an 'in' with the Kennedys and the other is that they spoon-fed us material to besmirch this woman. . . . I'm not a Kennedy insider. And if people only knew how much time and effort we put in, they'd . . . know that no one handed it to us.
"I have been hurt by [this] gossip . . . and by the fact that, in an effort to discredit my story, nobody called to confirm what was being said about me."
Is there anything Butterfield would do differently with hindsight? "It might have been better if we had a paragraph like the one in our later Editor's Note, saying explicitly that we hadn't meant to imply the woman wasn't raped. But I can't help feeling that it would have stuck out like a sore thumb and an editor would just have taken it out."
Would Butterfield have named the woman if the choice had been up to him? He says yes, adding both he and his wife, a journalist who was acquaintance-raped and wrote about it in Newsweek some ten years ago, believe that openness will eventually eliminate the stigma of shame.
For Butterfield, the bottom line remains that, "We were not setting out to paint an unpleasant portrait. . . . We really didn't know when we started who we were looking for, but this was who emerged. I would have been delighted to have found somebody else. But this is who we found . . . [and so] we had to write it."
As the Palm Beach story continues to unfold, however, other journalists are still debating: why, if the Times felt justified in naming the woman, it didn't also print her photo; why the first headline, "Leap up Social Ladder for Woman in Rape Inquiry," was later softened to "Woman in Florida Rape Inquiry Fought Adversity and Sought Acceptance"; why her name disappeared immediately following Butterfield's piece, only to reappear erratically later; and why the accused, who was styled William Kennedy Smith in early articles, has been called William K. Smith in every Times story between May 10, when he was charged, and May 29, when his DNA results were reported.
For another view, see "When public should remain private."
For Butterfield's response, see "What the media all missed."
Terry Poulton, a former columnist for The Toronto Star, will be the new editor of FineLine. Poulton has extensive writing and editing experience at newspapers and magazines in her native Canada.
by Fox Butterfield
As the main author of The New York Times profile of the woman who claims she was raped by William Kennedy Smith, I've spent a lot of time recently rethinking my role and trying to analyze the ethics of the situation. At a minimum, there are lessons here to be learned by all of us as journalists.
But I am disappointed that the [June] FineLine interview with me (see "Profile of controversy"), and the accompanying article by Deni Elliott (see "When public should remain private") — like myriad other publications' accounts — did not completely (or in some cases, remotely) reflect my thinking about what happened.
In the interview with Terry Poulton, I tried to make three important points that I felt had not been reflected in the widespread criticism of our story.
First, I sought to explain why we felt a profile of the woman was justified. While covering the story, I rapidly discovered that the woman was pursuing an unusual course for a rape victim. She, or her wealthy stepfather, had hired two high-priced criminal defense lawyers to represent her. These men, David Roth and Douglas Duncan, were well known in Palm Beach for having defended a number of movie and rock stars in drug cases. I was curious what their role was in representing a rape victim, since presumably the police and the local prosecutor were doing that job.
I discovered that Roth, the main lawyer in the case, seemed to be spending much of his time making appearances on radio and TV talk shows on which he discussed the incident. On several occasions when I called his office, I was told he was out only to find him on, say, Larry King Live that night. When Roth finally did hold a brief press conference, he said that he'd met with lawyers for the Kennedys, insinuating they might be trying to reach a financial settlement. When asked specifically what the meeting was about, Roth responded that he wouldn't answer "any factual questions."
In other words, here was an alleged rape victim who appeared to be paying lawyers to court publicity. By doing so, it seemed to me, she had breached her right to anonymity. She could not seek publicity yet insist on anonymity at the same time.
The second point I sought to make was that the Palm Beach case raises an important ethical dilemma that has drawn little attention. That is: What should reporters do if, in investigating the background of a rape victim, they find that she has a less than impeccable record?
Clearly there was no outcry when newspapers published profiles of the Central Park jogger — a Wellesley College graduate and Wall Street investment banker. She fit the public image of a victim.
But it quickly became apparent to the five of us at The Times (of both sexes) who worked on the profile that the victim here had a very different background: she was a poor student, had never held a job for long, drove recklessly despite having been in a life-threatening car accident, spent many evenings hanging out in local bars, and had a baby but no husband.
None of this behavior, of course, is relevant to whether or not she was raped. Our story was not intended to prove or disprove the rape. But these were the facts, as best we could determine them, of the way she led her life. (Incidentally, none of this material was spoon-fed to us by the Kennedy family or its lawyers, as several major publications have alleged.)
So what should we as reporters have done with this information? Should we have suppressed it because it painted an unflattering portrait of a woman? Should we write profiles of women only if they fit the public perception of virtuous? Would we apply the same standard to men?
From the criticism we have received, it seems the majority of our colleagues think it would have been better to withhold the facts. If that is their view, then are they proposing a double standard? Isn't this prudish, Puritanical and sexist? Do we really want to create a canon of political correctness for writing about women?
I don't pretend to know all the answers to these questions. But I note that no one has challenged the accuracy of our reporting. In fact, several papers, including the Washington Post and the Boston Globe — despite pummeling The Times for our profile — have since printed at least as damaging information drawn from police affidavits: that the woman used cocaine, had numerous boyfriends and underwent several abortions. Aren't these papers being hypocritical?
Thirdly, as a friend who teaches at Wellesley (and is herself a rape victim) points out, if Smith is found guilty, there might be a small positive outcome to this tragic incident. It will show that even a woman society doesn't consider above reproach can be raped. But if we'd censored ourselves and not written candidly about her background, that point could not be made. Therein lies the danger of withholding information for political reasons.
One final word. Poulton did correctly state that I had no part in the decision to reveal the woman's name in The Times. But she has incorrectly characterized my position, as well as that of my wife, Elizabeth Mehren, a staff writer for the Los Angeles Times, on naming rape victims. We both believe the best policy is to print a rape victim's name only when she agrees to its publication.
Fox Butterfield, a 21-year New York Times veteran and former Beijing bureau chief, is now The Times's Boston bureau chief.