McCartney Case Raises Questions of Truth, Privacy

As authorities in Santa Barbara verified Thursday that Linda McCartney did not die there as a family spokesman originally claimed, ethicists and public relations specialists debated a troubling question that has grown out of the controversy: Is it acceptable for celebrities and public figures to lie in order to protect their privacy?

“This whole episode is really a glimpse into the clash between two very important moral principles--the notion of privacy and the notion of honesty--and what can happen when those conflict,” said ethicist Michael Josephson, president of the Josephson Institute of Ethics in Marina del Rey.

“As is so often the case, the lying here made it worse.”

A new statement from a spokesman for Beatles legend Paul McCartney on Thursday appeared to corroborate reports that Linda McCartney had died at a family ranch in the Tucson area last Friday, despite the family’s earlier claims that she was on vacation in Santa Barbara at the time.

“It was a decoy,” family spokesman Geoff Baker admitted. “It was my decision. I said she had died in Santa Barbara, because if I had said where she died it would have been overrun straight away and they needed time, because of their grief, to come back [to England] in private.

“Morally, I have done nothing wrong and legally I have done nothing wrong. I am just trying to keep this family together,” he said.

But the misstatements intended to insulate the McCartneys instead appeared to backfire. Media reports around the world in the past two days have revisited the circumstances of Linda McCartney’s death from cancer, sparking speculation--denied by the family--that the 56-year-old former photographer may have died in an assisted suicide.

The Santa Barbara County Sheriff’s Department said Wednesday that it had opened an investigation to determine if Linda McCartney died within its jurisdiction, and whether she was cremated without proper legal authorization. The department was initially prevented from determining whether McCartney had died in Arizona by that state’s laws, which keep death certificates confidential.

Those questions appeared resolved Thursday after Santa Barbara authorities spoke with Linda McCartney’s New York oncologist and satisfied themselves that she did not die in their county.

As they closed their investigation, department officials said they didn’t resent being misled about the death.

“Certainly, this has been a time-consuming matter,” Sgt. Jim Peterson said. “But the bottom line is we found out enough information that we’re confident that we’ve done a thorough enough investigation.

“We’ve never had this [kind of] incident before,” he added. “Santa Barbara County is a place where there are lots of high-profile celebrity people, and we respect their privacy. As in any case, we will inquire if a death occurred in our county or not, whether it be a celebrity or not.”

Informing the Public

For longtime Beatles fans, the confusion over Linda McCartney’s death offered an ironic denouement of sorts to the pop culture hysteria of the late 1960s, when fans found supposed “clues” indicating that her famous husband had died.

But scholars saw a serious and troubling side to this week’s episode as well, noting ethical questions about how celebrities and their spokespeople go about informing--or misinforming--the public.

Cal State Fullerton communications professor Ed Trotter, who coordinates the school’s public relations program, said that although it may be easy to condemn deliberate lying, “there are no easy lessons” in a case like this.

At a time of debate over intense scrutiny into the private lives of President Clinton, the late Princess Diana and other public figures, he said, “this is just one piece of a larger discussion about what people really need to know, and who’s going to draw the line? Should it be the source or the media or the PR [public relations] person or a combination? That’s something we have to muddle through,” Trotter said.

“When is it our business to step into someone’s private grief just because we’ve seen him singing for 30 years?” he asked. “I’m sure it will be debated for a while, but I think there will also be a lot of sympathy for the family’s perspective.”

Indeed, in Santa Barbara’s coffee shops and around its water coolers, that seemed to be the case Thursday. Even if area residents were misled, it seems justified, many said.

“I think they deserve their privacy. It was their final days together, and they’re entitled to a little peace,” said April Myers, 21, a clerk at a Starbucks in Montecito.

“We’re all focusing on where did she die, what happened, why did they lie to me?” said family friend Dana Mazzetti of Hope Ranch, who helped organize a memorial ceremony. “But that’s the least important part of it. What’s important is to focus on Linda as a woman, as Paul’s wife, as a wonderful mother and all the contributions she made with the animal rights and with vegetarianism. . . . Let’s remember her like that.”

A Request for Privacy

Paul McCartney issued a “personal request” Thursday for the public and the media to honor his family’s privacy and to stay away from the 151-acre ranch outside Tucson that was the apparent site of his wife’s death. But at least one helicopter was seen Thursday hovering over the area.

Some public relations experts, meanwhile, had advice for the ex-Beatle legend.

“If I were McCartney, I would fire the [PR] firm,” said Carolyn Cline, a USC journalism professor who specializes in public relations and ethics. With the media fairly tame in its pursuit of the story, she said, “I don’t see privacy as the issue here. The code of ethics is that there’s really no justification for misleading the press and the public. There was no public service gained by this.”

Cline said the episode reminded her of the controversy over the 1979 death of former Vice President Nelson Rockefeller. A family spokesman announced that Rockefeller had died of a heart attack while working on an art book at his office in the Rockefeller Center. Only later did it emerge that he had actually died in a Manhattan townhouse, with a young woman there at the time. The media were furious that they had been duped, and the public relations man responsible for the account was vilified.

In both cases, Cline said, “the cover-up became the story. It rebounded badly.”

In the hard-nosed worlds of politics and corporate America, public relations spin-doctoring--or even the occasional outright deception--is often considered par for the course, experts said.

Among the many legends of Watergate was the 1973 statement from then-White House Press Secretary Ron Ziegler advising the media to ignore all previous statements on the subject as “inoperative.”

The McCartney case, however, presents a more delicate question because it centers not on politics or money but on a family’s ability to grieve for a loved one, scholars said.

Josephson, the Marina del Rey ethicist, said it is a “sad commentary” when a public figure feels he needs to go to such lengths to protect himself from supposed fans who might “cannibalize” his mourning.

But the better way to respond, he said, would have been to say nothing at all.

“Lying was not the right way to solve the problem,” he said. “That leads to this wild speculation on the lie itself, and you just get in deeper and deeper.”

Times correspondent Pamela J. Johnson in Santa Barbara contributed to this report. Lichtblau reported from Los Angeles; Cart reported from Tucson.