Whatever Happened to Privacy? : Television: CBS’ taping of a house raid for a ‘Street Stories’ segment points up the arrogance of the media in their search for news and profit.

Increasingly, privacy is becoming a casualty of media wars.

The issue arose anew when a federal judge in New York chastised both the U.S. Secret Service and a crew from the CBS News series “Street Stories” involved in searching the home of a man indicted for credit-card fraud. The news crew videotaped the raid for a “Street Stories” segment that has not run.

U.S. District Court Judge Jack Weinstein said Monday: “You cannot, in search of news and profit, break into people’s houses this way. It is simply intolerable.”

Frame those words.

Rejecting the network’s argument that it was protected by the First Amendment in this case, Weinstein ordered CBS to relinquish the videotape as evidence, predicting that it would lead to the acquittal of the defendant, who has pleaded not guilty.

Traditionally, most news organizations correctly resist subpoenas for unaired broadcast material or reporters’ notes, one reason being that to acquiesce would give the impression that the press was an agent or extension of the government. Once viewed in that light, the press could not function freely. For example, if local stations had handed over their unaired footage to authorities in the aftermath of the Los Angeles riots, they would have looked like police snitches, thereby further endangering news crews and other journalists operating in the ravaged areas.

The principle is sound. Yet one could argue that in the New York case, by accompanying Secret Service agents on a raid, the CBS News crew was already acting in collusion with the government. Hence, the tarnish was already on the image.

Whatever the legal outcome of this case, the ethical verdict is already in, for the CBS rationale for remaining in the suspect’s apartment reeks of media arrogance. CBS claims that it had implicit permission from the defendant’s wife to be present because she did not specifically ask the camera crew to leave. However, citing the woman’s attempts to “shield her face” and that of her 5-year-old child from the camera, Weinstein found the CBS argument “fanciful.”

Well, if “Cops” can do it. . . .

We’ve learned that the First Amendment is more than just an underpinning of our democracy, it’s also a thick wall for media to hide behind. Be on your guard when the media cite the “people’s right to know” as justification for violating the people’s right to privacy.

Just because the media can do something--because they’re entitled to under the law--doesn’t necessarily mean that they should.

For example, how appalling it was to see a TV camera (from KCBS-TV Channel 2) move in for close-ups at the recent funeral of a motorist killed in one of those high-speed police pursuits that result in the deaths of innocent people. The “Action News” camera edged closer to get a full shot of the victim’s sobbing little brother as he leaned his head on the casket. Other family members were devastated, too.

The people’s right to know? Whatever happened to the people’s right to private grief?

All of this recalls media behavior during the so-called “Atlanta child murders” case in the early 1980s, where there were instances of TV camera operators leaning back on caskets during the funerals of young victims to get shots of the anguished families. Why didn’t the families order these TV predators from the premises? Probably because they didn’t know they could. Most were unsophisticated people who were easily cowed and exploited by the press.

A press that frequently gets full of itself.

Although it’s easy to get heady in this work, the media’s instructions are not inscribed on a stone tablet delivered from a mountaintop. God didn’t appoint us to these jobs. A voice from a burning bush didn’t proclaim: “Thou shalt report.” Journalists are mortals drawing paychecks like everyone else. And when we trample on the rights of the people we’re supposed to be serving, we don’t honor our profession.

Short Stint: The bad news for CNN is that Catherine Crier is leaving. The worse news is that Christie Brinkley isn’t.

Crier is the former Texas judge who has spent three years speeding down journalism’s fast lane like a souped-up dragster, roaring ahead of most everyone else.

Having no experience did not appear to seriously hinder Crier, who turned out to be an astonishingly fast study. She departs CNN--for a correspondent’s job on ABC’s “20/20” starting Jan. 1--a polished anchor and incisive studio interviewer. Her daily series, “Crier & Co.,” which will now have alternating moderators and a new title, surely won’t be as sharp without her.

But what’s this? Crier has said that she’s moving to “20/20” because she wants to “learn to report.”

Come again? She’s going to “20/20” to learn to report? A network news show is Journalism 101? First you get the job, then you learn how to do it on the air? That worked for Crier at CNN, but digging out stories requires wider and more complex skills.

Thank goodness for field producers, those largely anonymous blue collars who labor off camera behind celebrity correspondents and often do most of the real grunt work to get a story. So if Crier scores fast, you’ll know the reason.

Meanwhile, she may turn out to be the highest-paid, highest-profile intern in the history of network news.

Somewhat less likely to get a job on “20/20” is Brinkley, the megamodel host of CNN’s 2-month-old daily half hour at 7:30 a.m., “Living in the ‘90s.” No one says CNN shouldn’t have some diversity, but this is living?

Brinkley can make even a story on the dangers of breast implants sound like a weightless featurette. She may be brilliant. She may spend her time off camera reading Proust as well as Glamour. She may be stimulating. She may be witty. But you reach different conclusions watching her introduce and occasionally taking part in these segments.

That old saw about putting your ear to a shell and hearing the sea? You have the impression from “Living in the ‘90s” that anyone putting an ear to Brinkley’s head would hear sea breezes.

This week she spent time in Beverly Hills, including a morning inside Jose Eber’s chic salon. Brinkley: “Two hundred hairdos a day!” Wow, indeed.

CNN, the all-news network.

Bottom Line: What is the primary job of television news? “To build audience,” a news director at a station in Sacramento informed a gathering of several hundred professional journalists and journalism students there last weekend. If good journalism is a by-product, that’s fine, he said. “But our main job,” he repeated, “is to build audience.”

It was startling that he publicly admitted that, even more startling that no one in the audience (from both print and broadcasting) offered a rebuttal. Maybe they all agreed, and if so, what does that say about this business?

This is going to sound musty, old-fashioned and out of touch, but whatever happened to informing the public? It’s true that a news organization that regularly fails to turn a profit will become an ex-news organization, especially in the scary ‘90s. Yet when the driving motivation of journalists is to increase readers, viewers or listeners, then any action that serves that end is deemed appropriate.

That includes airing frightening news headlines in prime time that tease--or even inflame--rather than inform, the purpose being to entice viewers to tune in at 11 p.m. for details.

In prime time a couple of weeks ago, for example, KABC-TV Channel 7 announced that “a motorist has been beaten to death by police.” By omitting the locale, Channel 7 was implying that this had happened in Los Angeles. Actually, it happened in Detroit.

And during Monday night news breaks this week, both Channel 2 and KNBC-TV Channel 4 announced that there had been gunfire and other violence at a big mall without identifying which one. Channel 4’s Wendy Tokuda: “A shooting and fight at a big local shopping center! At 11!” Less than an hour later, Paul Moyer repeated virtually the same headline on Channel 4.

Viewers--including those possibly worried about family members or other loved ones who worked or had gone shopping at malls that evening--had to wait until 11 to learn that the site of the violence was the Westside Pavilion.

If you think there’s something wrong about withholding news for self-serving reasons, hold the thought. You’re right. It stinks.

But anything goes when you’re building an audience.