Bob Greene Quits after Affair with Teen Revealed

September 15, 2002 9:17 PM

Bob Greene Quits after Affair with Teen Revealed No big deal in the broad scheme of things, perhaps, but for those who know of/have read Greene, this story is an extra-large helping of irony - basically, one of the high priests of wholesome, 50s-era Americana taken down by a sex scandal. On the other hand, it's not clear that he did anything legally wrong; nevertheless, the paper gave him the quick boot. We expect high ethical standards in politicians' personal lives, but is it fair to expect the same thing of journalists?
posted by risenc (29 comments total)

Hmm, this is odd. You'd think that if he'd actually committed statutory rape, they would say that he'd had inappropriate contact with an underage girl instead of "a girl in her late teens."

I freely admit that I don't know the first thing about Bob Greene, but the way the FPP describes him ("one of the high priests of wholesome, 50s-era Americana") makes me hope that someday, Bil Keane will lay some pipe on a girl in her late teens and get the boot, as well.
posted by textureslut at 9:46 PM on September 15, 2002

It sounds as though the termination had more to do with journalistic integrity than sex. As one letter writer at Jim Romensko's Poynter put it "We don't care if reporters sleep with elephants, as long as long as the reporter is not covering the circus."

Here's another news story about the resignation that includes a brief statement from Greene.
posted by madamjujujive at 9:51 PM on September 15, 2002

is it fair to expect the same thing of journalists?

Of course nobody can fault the Trib for covering its asses, but the less the byline matters to a story, the better the journalism is. The reason we boot out politicians (well, sometimes) for moral transgressions isn't that getting nasty with a teenager directly correlates to bad job performance. It's because the behavior is a distraction to that person's audience, which then causes people to adjudicate a piece of reporting by the byline, which then affects the newspaper's objectivity.

on preview what jujujive said
posted by PrinceValium at 9:54 PM on September 15, 2002

textureslut -

I'm inclined to agree with you about Bill Keane, but this one is pretty funny, IMO (of course, it's also at least 30 years old). I've seen some old Family Circus anthologies that have some surprisingly funny and edgy cartoons. It seems that only in the last couple of decades it became so saccharine and cloying.
posted by phong3d at 9:56 PM on September 15, 2002

This Family Circus archive thing should have totally been its own FPP. Oh my god, Mom was married to a different guy and he's a lazy drunk! Sorry about the thread drift...
posted by luser at 10:11 PM on September 15, 2002

Oh my god, Mom was married to a different guy and he's a lazy drunk!

Can you blame her for leaving? The new dad treats the older kids like his own, is helpful around the house -- and he's in color!

Back to the thread in progress...I wonder if the girl was someone he interviewed for one of his articles, or if she merely came up to him one day and said, "ooh, you're the guy in the paper!" I certainly agree that the first example would be a breach of journalistic ethics, but in the case of the latter example, he isn't bound by those rules.

The editor of the paper could have protected the identity of the girl, whilst giving a bit more information. A news audience is suddenly supposed to be satisfied with less than the whole story? Hahaha.
posted by jennak at 10:44 PM on September 15, 2002

textureslut: You're not missing much. Greene's become pretty much synonymous with sugary nostalgia for the Middle America of yesteryear. He's one of the few columnists I've ever heard of that inspired their very own ongoing roast. Back when I regularly read offline newspapers, he was pretty much the weenie that filled up the space left over when Dave Barry and Mike Royko were off.

To his credit, though, he's become something of a journalistic crusader against child abuse in later years.

On preview, I wonder along with jennak and with the same conclusions. Regardless, a wait of "some years" followed by an anonymous complaint to the paper seems kind of a wanky way to get back at him for (in the absence of evidence to the contrary) certainly loutish, possibly unethical but not illegal behavior.
posted by shemol at 10:51 PM on September 15, 2002

i would suspect they have a rather close-mouthed policy since they own such a gigantic percentage (see pulldown menus) of national media—and most of the chicago local media.
posted by patricking at 10:51 PM on September 15, 2002

All I can say is, when I'm in my 50s, if I can say that I'm

a) loved by a family that won't (apparently) leave me
b) holding down a successful job, and
c) bedding down hot teenage vixens like a pimp pumped full of viagra

then my life was clearly a success. Bob Greene, welcome to the amazing world of being my new personal hero!
posted by Ryvar at 1:15 AM on September 16, 2002

Journalist sacked for fucking a reader? That really would be news in England.
posted by alloneword at 3:09 AM on September 16, 2002

what?!?!? no pictures of the girl?!
posted by quonsar at 4:34 AM on September 16, 2002

Today's follow-up in the Trib sheds a bit more light on the situation. Apparently he not only met the young woman in connection with his column, he wrote about her in it as well.

I can't say this firing is any kind of loss for journalism. While going to school in Illinois in the early 90's, I would occasionally try to read his stuff. I usually quit after one or two paragraphs, gagging on the blandness of his trite prose. He even made Michael Jordan in his heyday seem boring.
posted by GreyWingnut at 8:23 AM on September 16, 2002

If he committed adultery with a 19 year old when he was 50 and he met the girl doing a story, and his opinion columns were all pro-family, america was so much better when, what's wrong with these people, etc - then yeah, he should resign for being a nationally syndicated hypocrite. Of course, I couldn't actually find any of his old columns to judge whether that was the case.

I did find this on mcsweeneys though: Actual Pull Quotes from Bob Greene's Nationally Syndicated Newspaper Column
posted by mdn at 8:30 AM on September 16, 2002

I suspect that if Bob Greene had simply had an extra-marital affair with a young woman of consenting age, there would have been no resignation. I think the problem was that he wrote about her.

Of course, if he simply got caught lying about the affair, he could have attacked his critics by claming that it was not an impeachable offense.
posted by Durwood at 8:45 AM on September 16, 2002

Now that I've read the Tribune follow-up, I'm going to defend the guy.

"The whole relationship with a source--you have to be transparent and pure. If you can't describe the conditions under which you are relating to a source--if you can't describe that in a story--then you've got no business doing it."

Yes, but his story was filed and printed before he asked the woman out to dinner. If she was the age of consent (I'm going to assume 18), she should know better than to have an affair. Or to have sex with somebody just because he's well-known.

If the woman was 25 at the time, we'd call him a hypocrite, but we wouldn't call for his resignation. So how is sleeping with an 18-year-old any different? Because she's impressionable? What if the woman was 35 and naive? Where do you draw the line?
posted by jennak at 8:51 AM on September 16, 2002

Goes around... comes around... Serves him right, the smarmy, self-congratulative fuck.
posted by JollyWanker at 8:54 AM on September 16, 2002

Interesting. I've assumed that Greene was part of the inspiration behind HBO's rather banal series: The Mind of the Married Man. Fascinating how fact imitates fiction.
posted by aladfar at 8:57 AM on September 16, 2002

I think the central issue here is what PrinceValium and madamjujujive were getting at: he had an inappropriate relationship with a source. This is along the lines of a politician getting it on with an intern. In a field where it's considered wrong to keep a coffee mug sent by a person/company within your beat, it's about as cut-and-dry a violation of ethics as you can get.
posted by me3dia at 8:59 AM on September 16, 2002

I think the central issue here is what PrinceValium and madamjujujive were getting at: he had an inappropriate relationship with a source. This is along the lines of a politician getting it on with an intern.

It's like a politician getting it on with a former intern. Greene's story was already printed before he even asked her out. Since their professional relationship was over, he was free to persue a romantic relationship.

Not that I don't think the guy's a creep, though.
posted by jennak at 9:11 AM on September 16, 2002

It doesn't matter if the relationship happened before or after the article appeared. It's still unethical.

Who's to say their professional relationship was over? Greene didn't write about her again, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have. Would you be comfortable with a judge who has an affair with a lawyer that just presented a case in his court, even if that trial was over?
posted by me3dia at 9:31 AM on September 16, 2002

me3die: Yep. I live in the real world. If he keeps it discreet at first, no big deal. The judge has done nothing wrong.
posted by raysmj at 9:40 AM on September 16, 2002

Who's to say their professional relationship was over? Greene didn't write about her again, but that doesn't mean he couldn't have.

Ask a journalism professor. There was no longer an ethical obligation.

If a political reporter writes a story about a politician, then beds her after the story is written, then that's a bad idea, but not necessarily unethical. The reporter would then have to tell his editor, and would probably be removed from his beat since he couldn't write any stories about said politician.

Okay, now we have a columnist (whose job is very different than a reporter's -- he doesn't have a beat, per se). The columnists beds a very young woman after writing a story about her. If a story has to be written about her again, he recuses himself and has someone else write the story. No big deal. He's slimey, but I wouldn't say he broke journalistic ethics.

My mom is running for office and her boyfriend is a reporter at the local paper. They met because he wrote a story about her three years ago. They didn't date until after the story was filed. When she decided to run for office, he was placed on a different beat so as not to create a conflict of interest.
posted by jennak at 9:41 AM on September 16, 2002

I'm surprised no one noticed this passage from the Trib's second-day story:

"Some who saw the e-mail said that its content described encounters with Greene more than a decade ago when the woman was in her late teens. The Chicago-area girl met with Greene in his office as part of a high-school project. Later she was the subject of one of Greene's columns, sources familiar with the message said.

"According to people who saw the e-mail, the message said that soon thereafter Greene asked the woman out to dinner. Greene later acknowledged to Tribune executives that a sexual encounter followed. At the time, the woman was of the age of legal consent, sources said.

"During the last year the woman phoned Greene twice, sources said. According to the e-mail, on the day after the second time, she received a call from the FBI suggesting she may be posing a threat to the columnist. Attempts to reach the Chicago office of the FBI were unsuccessful."

Are we to believe the FBI would get involved with a smarmy stalking case after a mere two phone calls, even one involving a nationally known journalist? Please. I came away from this passage wondering if Greene put someone up to calling her and pretending to be a G-man, to back her off. Which would seem to suggest there are layers upon layers of unrevealed facts about not only this incident, but perhaps others. The people who say an incident like this shouldn't kill a career are probably correct. But when your employer is looking for a reason, it's just enoug
posted by nance at 9:54 AM on September 16, 2002

John Scalzi on Greene.
posted by maudlin at 10:26 AM on September 16, 2002

Well, here is a copy of the Trib's code of ethics...breaking it is a firing offense. He broke it, he got fired. Seems pretty simple, really.
posted by dejah420 at 10:51 AM on September 16, 2002

He had an inappropriate relationship with a source. ... In a field where it's considered wrong to keep a coffee mug sent by a person/company within your beat, it's about as cut-and-dry a violation of ethics as you can get.

It isn't nearly that cut and dried. A person covered once by a slice-of-life columnist like Bob Greene is not an ongoing source.

I have never worked in a newsroom where you were forbidden from ever socializing with people you had quoted in a story, and there's nothing in the SPJ Code of Ethics or the Tribune Code of Ethics that clearly prohibits it either.

The only way a "conflict of interest" rule would come up is if a journalist continued to report on a person after getting into a personal relationship and did not disclose it to editors before publication. That doesn't appear to have happened here.

The biggest issue here appears to be the fact that Greene met her when she visited his office as part of a high-school project. Even if she was at the age of consent, the fact she was still in high school (and undoubtedly thrilled to be the subject of a column) makes it dicey for him to use this access to pursue a sexual relationship with her.
posted by rcade at 10:58 AM on September 16, 2002

Not a journo myself in any way, but it seems to me that the major problem here is Greene's latter-day self-created role as Defender of Abused Children. Some of his columns have taken very extreme positions -- if you are seen, in his judgement, to Not be Acting in the Best Interests of the Child, you're one evil mother-fucker. Situations that most people see as heartbreaking, difficult choices, like the biological and adoptive parents of Baby Richard, became Manichean operettas of irredemptive moral catastrophe in Greene's hands. One always suspected he was going over the top for some personal reason; this dalliance may not have been the only one, it may simply have been the only one the Trib could prove. (Somebody on Usenet posted a rumor that he used to drool and hang all over interns.) Maybe if he hadn't been such a crusader, his own little problem wouldn't have been so much of one for his career.
posted by dhartung at 4:38 PM on September 16, 2002

If she was the age of consent (I'm going to assume 18), she should know better than to have an affair. Or to have sex with somebody just because he's well-known.

For what it's worth, the age of legal consent in Illinois is 17. And I know that when I was 17, I may have known better than to sleep with a married man, but gosh, it would have been so exciting! He was going to *write* about me too! [/starry eyed teen]

(well...maybe with one of the guys in Duran Duran...but Bob Greene was nasty even 10 years ago.)
posted by macadamiaranch at 5:21 PM on September 16, 2002

Say what you will about Mr. Greene but you can have my copy of Good Morning Merry Sunshine when you pry it from my cold, dead hands.
posted by m@ at 6:33 PM on September 16, 2002