Why I don't want to know about Elián González

Learning Spanish was one of my New Year's resolutions, and here are two words I've come to know quite well:

Elián González.

I have nothing but sympathy for the 6-year-old boy whose custody appears up for grabs, despite the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service ruling that he be returned to his father by, well, yesterday. I cannot imagine being 6 years old and enduring two days at sea in a rickety boat and then an inner tube, losing my mother, and then arriving in a country where some people speak a different language and where my own family members wanted me not to return to my father. I have trouble imagining how I, at 6, would have dealt with even ONE of those problems.

But I see another problem in the Elián González story: why in the world do we have any right to know who he is? Isn't a 6-year-old boy, especially one whose life is beginning to look like The Book of Job, entitled to some privacy?

After the death of John F. Kennedy, Jr. last July, the media embarrassed itself again by dogging Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg's family, including her children, ages 6, 9, and 11. Encamped outside Schlossberg's Long Island home, reporters peeped through hedges, aimed zoom lenses and hovered in helicopters.

On "48 Hours," CBS broadcast an overhead shot of the Schlossberg house, with one of the children visible. People magazine ran a cover photo taken outside Kennedy Schlossberg's Manhattan apartment the day after the memorial service which included a child. Even the venerable New York Times ran a photo of Caroline and one of her children on page one.

In the aftermath of this hounding, some media professionals concerned about privacy rights took steps to prevent what happened to John Kennedy's nieces and nephews from happening to other children. The watchdog magazine Brill's Content formulated two policies concerning photographs and privacy, sent the policies to major media organizations, and asked for their voluntary compliance.

The first policy required that the media not use a photograph or video image of a child under 14 without the child's and a parent or guardian's permission. This would be waived when parents voluntarily place their children in the public eye. For example, if Al Gore's son made a campaign appearance, he would be presumed to have forfeited his protection.

The second policy would require that grieving relatives be off-limits to the media for one week after the death of a family member. This would mean not only no photographs or videotape but also no hounding or stalking. (It would not, however, prevent the use of "file" photos.)

Newsweek columnist Jonathan Alter told Brill's Content editor Steven Brill that he was "living in a dream world" if he thought the national media would endorse such a policy. Because of immediate feedback similar to Alter's, Brill's magazine faxed off a revision. The policy would be broadened to permit the photographing or videotaping of children at "newsworthy" funerals, but only in the immediate vicinity of a service, and to add loopholes for editorial exception-making big enough to pass the CNN Center through.

Alter turned out to be right.

Of the major television executives, only Fox News Channel endorsed the policies. CBS Managing Editor Dan Rather was the only network anchor to say yes, while his chairman and CEO and his news division president said no. Most other major media figures said no: NBC executives, as well as prominent anchors Tom Brokaw, Katie Couric, and Matt Lauer; ABC decision-makers, including parent company Disney's CEO Michael Eisner; CNN leaders and the chairmen of Time and U.S. News & World Report; publishers, chairmen, and editors of The Washington Post, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chicago Tribune, USA Today, and the National Enquirer (surprise, surprise). Their responses are accurately represented by Jacksonville, Fla., Times-Union editor Patrick Yack, who said that, while his staff tries to be sensitive, "We don't have a hard-and-fast rule[;] we handle things on a case-by-case basis."

Time managing editor Walter Isaacson made the most provocative contribution to this debate when he suggested that Steven Brill's policy, as originally worded, would have prohibited the most famous photograph of John F. Kennedy, Jr., that of him saluting his father's casket. Millions of people, myself included, find that 1963 photograph intensely moving. Never mind that we probably had no business seeing the boy there in the first place.

I'm concerned about the erosion of children's right to privacy. It used to be that the media didn't identify children under the age of 18 even if they committed a crime. By that principle, we wouldn't know the names of any recent school-shooting perpetrators except Eric Harris. Normally the media withholds the names of victims, but who in this country couldn't identify JonBenét Ramsey? I suppose that rule can be waived if the victim in question is dead? Most Americans can probably also tell you the name of JonBenét's brother, although he was only 9 at the time of his sister's death. What will it be like for Burke Ramsey to go through life recognized as the brother of "that poor little girl?"

I have a good friend who, like Elián González, is 6 years old. I'd hate to see her torn between relatives in two countries, or floating across the ocean on an inner tube. I'd also hate to see her on the cover of Time or Newsweek. She's 6 years old, and I think she is entitled to some privacy.