A case of fair game or just fairness?

With some well-chosen words, a reader hit a nerve. When it comes to writing about people being charged with or under investigation for crimes, should it be open season on them? Have we forgotten that people are innocent until proved guilty and that it’s difficult for them to remove the taint after being publicly linked to possible illegal actions?

The issue is especially relevant these days in Orange County, because it’s been on a roll when it comes to high-profile people under legal scrutiny.

Our former sheriff, Mike Carona, faces federal corruption charges.

Our treasurer, Chriss Street, is under investigation by state and federal agencies but not charged with any crime.

And most recently, two of our most illustrious businessmen, Broadcom Corp. founders Henry Samueli and Henry Nicholas, were hit with federal charges -- although Nicholas appears to be in much deeper water than Samueli.

What got the reader’s goat was my recent column on Samueli, which was largely sympathetic. The Securities and Exchange Commission accused Samueli and Nicholas of improperly backdating stock options in ways that misled shareholders. Last week Nicholas was indicted on criminal charges by a federal grand jury that he backdated the options and distributed drugs.

I asked in print whether Samueli’s extensive philanthropy shouldn’t be weighed against the SEC accusation and went so far as to inquire about a “rap on the knuckles” for him.

I thought I was being nice, but in the course of getting to the point, I upset the reader. “Why,” he wrote, “would anyone even raise the question of how we might judge Dr. Samueli by weighing the ‘good’ vs. the ‘bad . . . ‘ when we have no idea what the evidence looks like nor whether he is guilty of anything at all?”

He went on to indict me. “All of your speculation about virtue vs. sin is in my opinion really cheap journalism.”

A similar chorus of protest has erupted over columns about Carona who, like all the others mentioned above, has denied any wrongdoing. In one column, for example, I mused about the possibility of Carona and baseball star Barry Bonds someday meeting each other in prison.

I won’t admit to cheap journalism, but neither do I dismiss the complaints. Like I said, he hit a nerve. I could argue that once someone has been charged with a crime he or she does become fair game, especially if that person is a high-profile public figure.

I realize the upset reader isn’t saying we shouldn’t report that Carona was indicted or that the SEC accused Samueli. Rather, he seems to be asking why I can’t leave it at that. He wrote that I was “pandering to a hunger for gossip” and trashing the innocent-until-proved-guilty principle.

My best defense is that it’s hard to resist writing about the county’s sheriff and one of its most prominent citizens (Samueli also owns the Anaheim Ducks), even while realizing both men could beat the charges. I also realize it probably won’t assuage the reader’s unhappiness to say we hope that the reading public also assumes the men are innocent until proved otherwise.

Nor would it probably matter to him that many other readers wish we’d lower the boom even more than we have on Carona.

In Samueli’s case, I thought I was generating a legitimate public debate about considering his philanthropy in the face of less-than-earth-shaking charges. It should be noted that Samueli wasn’t indicted on the stock options matter but was identified in Nicholas’ indictment as an unindicted co-conspirator.

Now that I’m sufficiently guilt-panged, allow me to take comfort in how things turned out for another man who got his name in the papers for the wrong reason. Gregory Abbott is a Sunny Hills High School teacher who was arrested a couple of weeks ago and jailed briefly after someone tipped police that he had a shotgun and marijuana in his car, which was parked on campus.

He did, prompting his arrest. For a teacher, that’s pretty bad stuff, and it made the papers and the Internet.

However, police fairly quickly determined that Abbott had been set up. And then they did something pretty cool: They called a news conference to announce it.

They didn’t have to, but it was the right thing to do. “Reputations are everything for teachers,” Fullerton Police Sgt. Mike MacDonald says. “When that’s tarnished, you want to try to repair it if you have the ability to do so. We felt is was a very important thing to do, and the sooner the better.”

So, the department did that, while continuing to investigate who might have framed Abbott.

For Abbott, a happy ending.

Just the kind Messrs. Carona, Street, Nicholas and Samueli would love to read in the paper.

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Dana Parsons’ column appears Tuesdays and Fridays. He can be reached at (714) 966-7821 or at dana.parsons@latimes.com. An archive of his recent columns is at www.latimes.com/parsons.