I not getting the “he should never have published his last name” thing. If Scot didn’t want his surname to be published then it would be a kindness to respect his wishes. But can you imagine writing a newspaper article where you are reporting on the actions of an anonymous person? Its borderline nonsense. Especially if it is true that 5 minutes is all that it takes to find out who they are. If I read a newspaper article about the antics of a secret person, then I worked out who they were in 5 mins, my estimate of the journalist writing it would drop through the floor. Imagine you read about the mysterious father of bitcoin, or an unknown major donor to a political party, all dressed in secrecy, and then two googles later you know who it is. It would reflect so badly on the paper you were reading.
I think our journalist is correct when he says that the choice was not to write about him at all, or to give his full name, by the standards of every newspaper I have ever read (only UK papers, maybe there are differences in the US). In print journalism it is the standard to refer to people by Title Firstname Surname, the/a REASON WE CARE. (EG. “Mr Ed Miliband, the Shadow Secretary for the Environment”, “Dr Slate Star a prominent blogger”).
Maybe there is an angle on this I am missing? (His name is a BIG DEAL for some reason? But that just makes publishing it more essential not less.)
But can you imagine writing a newspaper article where you are reporting on the actions of an anonymous person? Its borderline nonsense.
I can easily imagine writing a newspaper article about how Charlie Sheen influenced the film industry, that nowhere mentions the fact that his legal name is Carlos Irwin Estévez. Can’t you? Like, here’s one.
(If my article were more biographical in nature, with a focus on Charlie Sheen’s childhood and his relationship with his parents, rather than his influence on the film industry, then yeah I would presumably mention his birth name somewhere in my article in that case. No reason not to.)
I think there’s a tradeoff where on one side it seems fair to keep the two identities separate, on the other as a journalist it makes sense that if it takes five minutes for someone to find out Scott’s last name, including it in the article doesn’t sound like a big deal.
The problem is that from the point of view of view of a patient you probably needed more than 5 minutes and Scott’s full name to find out about the blog.
Suppose Carlos Irwin Estévez worked as a therapist part-time, and he kept his identities separate such that his patients could not use his publicly known behavior as Sheen in order to update about whether they should believe his methods work. Should journalists writing about the famous Estevéz method of therapy keep his name out of the article to support him?
That might be relevant if anyone is ever interested in writing an article about Scott’s psychiatric practice, or if his psychiatric practice was widely publicly known. It seems less analogous to the actual situation.
To put it differently: you raise a hypothetical situation where someone has two prominent identities as a public figure. Scott only has one. Is his psychiatrist identity supposed to be Sheen or Estevéz, here?
Estevéz. If I recall this correctly, Scott thought that potential or actual patients could be influenced in their therapy by knowing his public writings. (But I may mistemember that.)
In that case, “journalists writing about the famous Estevéz method of therapy” would be analogous to journalists writing about Scott’s “famous” psychiatric practice.
If a journalist is interested in Scott’s psychiatric practice, and learns about his blog in the process of writing that article, I agree that they would probably be right to mention it in the article. But that has never happened because Scott is not famous as a psychiatrist.
I said Estevéz because he is the less famous aspect of the person, not because I super-finetuned the analogy.
Updating the trust into your therapist seems to be a legitimate interest even if he is not famous for his psychiatric theory or practice. Suppose for example that an influential and controversial (e.g. White-supremacist) politician spent half his week being a psychiatrist and the other half doing politics, but somehow doing the former anymously. I think patients might legitimately want to know that their psychiatrist is this person. This might even be true if the psychiatrist is only locally active, like the head of a KKK chapter. And journalists might then find it inappropriate to treat the two identities as completely separate.
I assume there are reasons for publishing the name and reasons against. It is not clear that being a psychiatrist is always an argument against.
Part of the reason is, possibly, that patients often cannot directly judge the quality of therapy. Therapy is a credence good and therapists may influence you in ways that are independent of your depression or anorexia. So having more information about your psychiatrist may be helpful. At the same time, psychiatrists try to keep their private life out of the therapy, for very good reasons. It is not completely obvious to me where journalists should draw the line.
That’s a reasonable argument but doesn’t have much to do with the Charlie Sheen analogy.
The key difference, which I think breaks the analogy completely, is that (hypothetical therapist) Estevéz is still famous enough as a therapist for journalists to want to write about his therapy method. I think that’s a big enough difference to make the analogy useless.
If Charlie Sheen had a side gig as an obscure local therapist, would journalists be justified in publicizing this fact for the sake of his patients? Maybe? It seems much less obvious than if the therapy was why they were interested!
I not getting the “he should never have published his last name” thing. If Scot didn’t want his surname to be published then it would be a kindness to respect his wishes. But can you imagine writing a newspaper article where you are reporting on the actions of an anonymous person? Its borderline nonsense. Especially if it is true that 5 minutes is all that it takes to find out who they are. If I read a newspaper article about the antics of a secret person, then I worked out who they were in 5 mins, my estimate of the journalist writing it would drop through the floor. Imagine you read about the mysterious father of bitcoin, or an unknown major donor to a political party, all dressed in secrecy, and then two googles later you know who it is. It would reflect so badly on the paper you were reading.
I think our journalist is correct when he says that the choice was not to write about him at all, or to give his full name, by the standards of every newspaper I have ever read (only UK papers, maybe there are differences in the US). In print journalism it is the standard to refer to people by Title Firstname Surname, the/a REASON WE CARE. (EG. “Mr Ed Miliband, the Shadow Secretary for the Environment”, “Dr Slate Star a prominent blogger”).
Maybe there is an angle on this I am missing? (His name is a BIG DEAL for some reason? But that just makes publishing it more essential not less.)
I can easily imagine writing a newspaper article about how Charlie Sheen influenced the film industry, that nowhere mentions the fact that his legal name is Carlos Irwin Estévez. Can’t you? Like, here’s one.
(If my article were more biographical in nature, with a focus on Charlie Sheen’s childhood and his relationship with his parents, rather than his influence on the film industry, then yeah I would presumably mention his birth name somewhere in my article in that case. No reason not to.)
I think there’s a tradeoff where on one side it seems fair to keep the two identities separate, on the other as a journalist it makes sense that if it takes five minutes for someone to find out Scott’s last name, including it in the article doesn’t sound like a big deal.
The problem is that from the point of view of view of a patient you probably needed more than 5 minutes and Scott’s full name to find out about the blog.
Suppose Carlos Irwin Estévez worked as a therapist part-time, and he kept his identities separate such that his patients could not use his publicly known behavior as Sheen in order to update about whether they should believe his methods work. Should journalists writing about the famous Estevéz method of therapy keep his name out of the article to support him?
That might be relevant if anyone is ever interested in writing an article about Scott’s psychiatric practice, or if his psychiatric practice was widely publicly known. It seems less analogous to the actual situation.
To put it differently: you raise a hypothetical situation where someone has two prominent identities as a public figure. Scott only has one. Is his psychiatrist identity supposed to be Sheen or Estevéz, here?
Estevéz. If I recall this correctly, Scott thought that potential or actual patients could be influenced in their therapy by knowing his public writings. (But I may mistemember that.)
In that case, “journalists writing about the famous Estevéz method of therapy” would be analogous to journalists writing about Scott’s “famous” psychiatric practice.
If a journalist is interested in Scott’s psychiatric practice, and learns about his blog in the process of writing that article, I agree that they would probably be right to mention it in the article. But that has never happened because Scott is not famous as a psychiatrist.
I said Estevéz because he is the less famous aspect of the person, not because I super-finetuned the analogy.
Updating the trust into your therapist seems to be a legitimate interest even if he is not famous for his psychiatric theory or practice. Suppose for example that an influential and controversial (e.g. White-supremacist) politician spent half his week being a psychiatrist and the other half doing politics, but somehow doing the former anymously. I think patients might legitimately want to know that their psychiatrist is this person. This might even be true if the psychiatrist is only locally active, like the head of a KKK chapter. And journalists might then find it inappropriate to treat the two identities as completely separate.
I assume there are reasons for publishing the name and reasons against. It is not clear that being a psychiatrist is always an argument against.
Part of the reason is, possibly, that patients often cannot directly judge the quality of therapy. Therapy is a credence good and therapists may influence you in ways that are independent of your depression or anorexia. So having more information about your psychiatrist may be helpful. At the same time, psychiatrists try to keep their private life out of the therapy, for very good reasons. It is not completely obvious to me where journalists should draw the line.
That’s a reasonable argument but doesn’t have much to do with the Charlie Sheen analogy.
The key difference, which I think breaks the analogy completely, is that (hypothetical therapist) Estevéz is still famous enough as a therapist for journalists to want to write about his therapy method. I think that’s a big enough difference to make the analogy useless.
If Charlie Sheen had a side gig as an obscure local therapist, would journalists be justified in publicizing this fact for the sake of his patients? Maybe? It seems much less obvious than if the therapy was why they were interested!