Between News and Entertainment

Today is a great day. I am going back to France! I have been in the United States for two months. I am waiting in the airport and I want to see what has happened in France since I have been in the US. On most newspapers, the headlines are about Rachida Dati. The French Attorney General is pregnant!
Rachida Dati pregnant! “Not only will the pregnancy of the minister not provoke political scandal, but it is likely to boost her popularity,” writes Anna Lietti in her article “Le choc des civilisations ; Candide” that appeared in the September 8th, 2008 issue of the Swiss newspaper “Le Temps”.
Should it provoke a political scandal? I don’t think so. Indeed, I consider this as entertainment: it is quite funny that we still don’t know who the father of the baby is, but it is not going to change my mind about the policies she is pursuing. The fact that she is pregnant is not relevant to me, because she does not have to be judged on the weight of the baby when he’ll be born. Dati deserves a private life as long as it does not affect her judgment. Another example is Monica Lewinsky’s scandal. Of course, Bill Clinton had an inappropriate behaviour with Lewinsky but I believe this had no impact on his policies.

The case of Sarah Palin is somewhat different. There are two main reasons that I think Palin’s private life has to be carefully vetted.
The first one is that, before being picked up by John McCain, nobody knew who she was. Consequently, that it is expected that people would be interested in what her past was and in what her present is because it is up to us to determine what her future will be. “By choosing a running mate unknown to most of the nation, and doing so just before the Republican National Convention, John McCain made it inevitable that there would be a frantic media vetting”, writes Clark Hoyt in his article titled “The Scrutiny of Sarah Palin” that was published in the September 6th, 2008 issue of the New York Times.
The second reason is that Palin pointed out that she was a “hockey mom” at the GOP convention. “I was just your average hockey mom and signed up for the PTA,” said Palin during her introduction speech at the GOP convention on September 3rd. “I love those hockey moms. You know what they say the difference is between a hockey mom and a pit bull? Lipstick.”
With that said, this is the job of journalists to check the information and to try to dig out the truth. Without publishing every detail of her private life, it is the duty of journalists to provide information to help people create their own opinion on Palin’s character.
For example, the fact that her 17-year-old daughter is pregnant is definitively relevant. This is critical information because Palin is promoting abstinence and no sexual education in high school and she is a pro-life. I think that when you are sharing these values, you have to be a model, an example for all Americans. If Palin cannot pass her values onto her own family, how can she manage to pass her values onto every American?
On the contrary, her daughter’s pregnancy could serve as a good example to all American teenagers who are facing the same burdens as Bristol Palin.

To conclude, I believe that public people deserve private lives as long as it does not affect the judgment of these people. Thus, it is the duty of journalists to investigate and report, but it is also their duty to publish what is relevant and what is relevant only.