deLuzuriaga Crossed THE Line, and Several Others

Sleeping with the most prominent and influential person on her beat? Sending salacious emails documenting their scandalous affair? Did Tania deLuzuriaga step from one side of the camera to the other, thereby throwing any professional ethics out the window? Hard to say. I haven't seen any reports that names the source of the emails deLuzuriaga allegedly sent administrator Carvalho, but the fact that deLuzuriaga declined comment adds come credibility to the allegations.

One of journalism's most cherished attributes is objectivity. I doubt that objectivity would have been easy for deLuzuriaga when she was having inappropriate sexual relations with a frequent subject of her reporting.

This underlines what seems to be a common trend in journalism these days. Hopefully Bill O'Reilly isn't sleeping with anyone that he covers (unless he happens to be interviewing his wife), but that isn't what I mean. The proverbial wall between the story and the narrator is quickly dissolving, beginning with and mostly centering around partisanship. It's one thing to be passionate about your work, but the role of a journalist is to be passionate about reporting the story, not necessarily passionate about (or in deLuzuraiga's case, with) the story itself. By pulling themselves into the news, journalists lose credibility, even if their popularity, hits on Google, or ratings grow. And grow they will, as in the case of deLuzuriaga. She must have known, somewhere inside her, that she was putting herself in the news with her and Carvalho's actions. Maybe that was the appeal. It certainly seems to be the case for Bill O'Reilly and other pundits, who thrive off of the notoriety that comes from their partisan stances and vocal interaction with news events and stories. Whenever O'Reilly gets involved, he becomes part of the story. People didn't watch his interview with Barack Obama to learn more about Obama. They watched in anticipation, like NASCAR fans waiting for a wreck, of O'Reilly attacking Obama in some way. The reporter was half the story.

Obviously media bias and sex scandals are distant in relation, but deLuzuriaga's story got me thinking. I hope for her sake that the allegations turn out to be false, but somehow I doubt that they are. It seems that she, as with many journalists, didn't know where to draw the line.