PressEthic

Bill Maher declared his opinion of a prominent GOP leader’s sexual orientation on CNN’s Larry King Live. One may question what is more disturbing, the fact that Maher had no qualms about asserting such information – or the lengths that CNN went to in order to pretend the entire situation never happened?

Maher appeared on Larry King Live on Wednesday, surely to provide titillating and controversial political commentary on the elections. CNN got more than it bargained for. Maher discussed his feelings on the anti-gay sentiment amongst Republicans and went further to suggest that several prominent GOP members are gay. After prodding from King, Maher “reluctantly” ‘outed’ Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman.

According to an article in Editor and Publisher, Maher had no reservations about doing this because, “others had done the same before him.”

Naturally, bloggers and YouTube immediately gravitated to the topic. John Aravosis discussed the situation on AmericaBlog and posted the Larry King Live interview on YouTube. At the same time, CNN was deleting the excerpt from its transcripts of the show and editing it out of the re-broadcast. The dichotomy between the contrived CNN footage and the actual taping caused even more controversy.

It was then that CNN demanded all footage of the Maher/King interview be removed from YouTube and elsewhere, citing a “cease and desist” on the basis of “copy infringement.”

Aravosis' reaction to this:

I just got a cease-and-desist letter from YouTube, see below, regarding my CNN footage I posted. The footage, you'll recall, was from Larry King Live last night in which Bill Maher outed Republican Party chair Ken Mehlman as gay. It seems that CNN has suddenly decided that it no longer wants bloggers, or YouTube, posting any of its video, which is kind of surprising since I always thought we were doing a CNN a favor by constantly touting their network. Apparently I was wrong.

The actual CNN footage is still available on Huffington Post .

Decide for yourself. Personally, I enjoy Bill Maher to an extent. Surely, CNN knows the probability that he will cause controversy – that’s why he is such a frequent contributor, one would assume. I believe that the ‘outing’ was Maher’s personal ethical decision. But where does CNN's responsibility lie?

In fact, CNN chose to host Maher on a live taping. What he said was an integral focal point of the show. Is CNN not then obligated to air the show continuously unedited? One can question whether CNN's motivations in excluding Maher's comments were from an ethical or business perspective.

Was CNN justified in not airing the 'outing?' Or was the greater ethical transgression in omitting it once it had in fact, occurred? And what kind of precedent is set when we accept such practices of self-censorship?

Questions abound, but there is no question to the fact that the immediacy and prevalence of online media necessitates a new level of accountability for all journalists.