Just a Minute!

Hutchison's privacy trumps the media's fight to know (8/4/09)

     In the race for King County executive, Susan Hutchison has campaigned like an incumbent, keeping a lower profile than her opponents.

     It’s sound political strategy when you’re leading in the polls, but irksome to any voter who wants to know where Hutchison stands.

     Accordingly, the Seattle Times thinks we would benefit by having the Superior Court unseal the record of Hutchison’s discrimination lawsuit against her former employer, KIRO-TV. Last week, several news organizations joined the effort.

     In explaining the move, Rowland Thompson, executive director of Allied Daily Newspapers of Washington, gave this vapid explanation: “She has been a private employee all of her life, unlike the other candidates in the race, and this is a window into viewing her employment and stresses around that.”

     Thompson is slicing some serious baloney here. The people’s right to know doesn’t outweigh Hutchison’s right to privacy. Her lawsuit was a personal – and personnel – matter. While she has been exasperatingly coy as a candidate, it doesn’t give a frustrated media the right to act like peeping toms.

     If a gossip rag had rummaged through Hutchison’s trash or rifled her underwear drawer, we’d be aghast at the breach. The media are asking to do the equivalent while hiding behind the bloomers of the law.

JUST A MINUTE! is a weekly essay intended to be read in about 60 seconds. Find more online at seattlepostglobe.org.