COMMENTARY : If They Are Not Breaking Law, Athletes Deserve Some Privacy

Say David Cohen, the second-year hospital resident, wearies at looking at the four walls of his garret between shifts and sets off for some diversion at one of the singles bars along Manhattan’s Bedpan Alley. It’s his living room, for all intents and purposes.

Say he sits next to Phyllis Zilch and they make conversation. There’s a spark between them, as happens with young people. Say they leave together. Maybe they go for coffee or maybe something else. Whose business is it?

Maybe they’ll find love, marriage and a white picket fence in front of his doctor’s shingle.

Now change the spelling for a moment. Say it’s David Cone, the noted New York Mets pitcher, tiring of the four walls of his spring training motel or his hotel room on the road or his apartment at home. Say his energy level is elevated from the day’s game and he doesn’t want to watch TV, and he goes out to the living room, and there are a platoon of teased-hair, mini-skirted, sun-bronzed hard bodies jiggling for his attention.

Say he finds one whose company interests him. They leave together for who knows where and what. Maybe they’ll find love and a white picket fence. Maybe they’ll find bedsheets. Whose business is it? Is it the responsibility of the reporter covering the baseball team or his newspaper to pry, snoop and spy on him? Is it the obligation of the reporter to inform Lem Krocknockle’s wife that her husband is out with another woman?

Clearly they’re not the same -- Cohen and Cone. But how different are they? The athlete is a public figure and so loses some of his right to privacy; he has cultivated his fame and, the moment he takes a cent of endorsement money, he has acknowledged that. But has he lost all of his privacy?

And who is served by knowing?

“Do we have a right to snoop on David Cone as opposed to David Cohen?” said Stephen Isaacs, associate dean of the Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism. “I would say, get the stuff and evaluate: Is it germane to his performance? I’m not sure that it is.”

It was important for the public to know about Clarence Thomas because he was going to be interpreting the laws and American life for a generation. Gary Hart was and Bill Clinton is a candidate for the presidency; we ought to know something about their foolhardiness or stability.

“Sports writer or Washington writer, tell me everything that’s germane, but only when it’s germane,” said Richard Cunningham, professor of journalism at New York University. “ ... Is anybody who sticks his head above the trench a legitimate target? I think not.”

When a newspaper sends a team of reporters to interview women and men in the wake of Magic Johnson, and names names, that’s a valid project. It tells us -- warns us -- about the lifestyle of famous athletes and the eager women who seek their company. We are all served by it.

Isaacs of Columbia tells of his time as an editor in Washington, of handling a story naming several lawyers who were drunk while doing official business. A prominent lawyer heard of the story and asked Isaacs if he had any reporters who wrote better drunk than sober. “I said we did,” Isaacs related. “He asked, ‘What does that have to do with the quality of their work.’ I said, ‘I guess I’ll take their names out of the story.’ And he was right.”

To the contrary, while an editor in Minneapolis, Isaacs handled a story about public officials patronizing prostitutes. “What did that have do with their making public policy?” Isaacs said. “One of them was pushing for more severe laws on prostitution at the time he was in love with a prostitute. We ran his name.”

It’s a valid project to show what spring training and life on the road is. Margaret Whiting’s new album features a song titled “I Believe the Lies of Handsome Men.” One of the gossips quotes a tipsy woman as saying, “I danced with David Cone. I think it was David Cone. He said, ‘Hi, my name’s David.’ ... Maybe it wasn’t Cone. Maybe it was my imagination, I hope it was him, though.”

Well, then, what do we have? Should it be shocking to the gossips when the athletes don’t want to speak with them?

Is the reporter covering the team or the sport obligated to tell all? The reporter who doesn’t know more than he or she writes is not much of a reporter; the reporter who writes everything he or she knows is a fool. A reporter who deals with the same people every day always is weighing whether writing a story is worth losing a source. If the story is important enough, write it. If the cost is greater than the news, don’t write it.

There are lines and boundaries that don’t compromise the truth. If the boys’ night out involves breaking up a bar, running out on a check, an auto accident, a fight or rape, that has to be reported. If it makes the police report or is covered up by the police, write it. Tough. Racial attitudes should be reported if you can make the story stand up.

Mike Tyson’s brutal conduct to male and female was in the fabric of virtually everything written about him long before he was convicted of rape.

It doesn’t take much to observe a player when you’re living in the same hotel. I go to the bar to unwind after a story; I see things. Usually I talk to people, which is why I reject my hotel room. Sometimes the people I talk to are women. Is that wrong? Is it wrong when Bret Saberhagen, whose wife is home because she is pregnant, goes to that surrogate living room and talks with a woman?

What Dean Isaacs identifies is called “The Geraldoization of news.” He cites a poll in which a large proportion of people who watched Geraldo, Oprah and Donahue thought they were viewing news. Good grief.

“We go after public people in their private lives,” Isaacs said. “I believe strongly in the system in the United States where public figures are out in the open and light, where we can talk about the king’s sexual escapades and live to tell about it. It’s important to me.”

But is it anybody’s business whether David Cone goes home with a new friend or with the News and Mirror? He is not King Cone.