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Thanks to Michelle M/E for giving me a heads up about the below article by journalism professor and former Wall Street Journal reporter Asra Q. Nomani. Britney Spears’ illness certainly is a tough case for celebrity journalism. How much is too much? What is a public person entitled to, in terms of privacy? I’ve long debated this myself because I’ve been tempted to write about Britney and then felt appalled by my own instincts, and then frustrated that I was even in the position of questioning myself, given the way that Britney has courted the media in the past. So thanks to Nomani and the Los Angeles Times for giving me the kick in the ass that I needed. I think Asra is right.

Leave Britney alone

The young star is in a fight for her life against mental illness.

By Asra Q. Nomani

I’ll never forget the first time I saw my brother strapped to a gurney. I was just a teen, and he’d been diagnosed with schizo-affective disorder, an illness akin to schizophrenia that causes mood swings, psychosis and violent outbursts. Our family had just committed him for psychiatric treatment, and I wept, shouting into the air, “I want my brother back.” At home, my parents sobbed. But at least we went through this anguish in private.

So it’s impossible for me to find any entertainment value in the public harassment of Britney Spears, who was released from the psychiatric ward of UCLA Medical Center last week. And as a journalist, I doubt there is news value in it either.

Mental illness doesn’t always elicit compassion; it’s hard to see, so it’s hard to understand. Perhaps in the wake of Spears’ breakdown, California mental health advocates will lobby to change the state’s involuntary commitment laws so that those who are sick get treatment, even if they don’t realize how badly they need it. In the meantime, all of us should reflect on the fact that we wouldn’t be so cruel to somebody diagnosed with another disease. Would we make a sideshow of someone with a brain tumor?

It’s easy to blame the paparazzi and celebrity gossip websites, and, granted, they are the worst. TMZ promoted a video of Spears crying with the headline, “Britney Spears on Suicide Watch?” Over a photo of Spears sitting on a curb after her fight with her manager, PerezHilton.com scrawled “Britwreck.”

But the mainstream media are complicit. After Spears’ release (over the objection of her family), A.J. Hammer, host of CNN’s “Showbiz Tonight,” stumbled over the pronunciation of Spears’ supposed medications; the words “Burning Britney Questions!” rolled across the bottom of the screen. “Britney’s Mental Illness” was the cover of a recent People magazine. The Daily Telegraph’s website featured this headline: “Mad Britney Spears detoxed by doctors,” with a link, “See pictures of the drama here.”

By exploiting Spears’ moment of vulnerability, media companies have crossed the line of basic moral decency. To me, this includes Wenner Media, owner of US Weekly and Rolling Stone, which just published an expose of Spears’ mental illness, and even Barbara Walters, who recently reported on Spears’ mental health issues on “The View.”

Enough. Time Warner Inc. (parent of CNN, People, AOL and Entertainment Weekly), News Corp. (the Rupert Murdoch firm that owns Fox News and papers around the globe) and others should halt all coverage of Spears until she is healthy. Let’s leave Britney and her family alone.

Responsible journalists long ago came to the ethical determination not to publish the names of rape victims or to air the most gruesome of terrorist videos. We can do the same here. We can get off this maniacal roller coaster that is Britney Spears coverage to remember one important fact: This is a 27-year-old in a fight for her life.

My role model in this debate is photographer Nick Stern, who quit his job Feb. 1 with the Splash news agency because he couldn’t stomach shooting the Spears story any longer. “It’s not journalism. Sooner or later, someone’s going to get killed,” he told the Independent in London. “Possibly Britney herself.”

Even aspiring journalists are making the right call. At Georgetown University’s School of Continuing Studies, where I’m a journalism professor, senior Erin Delmore walked off the set of a campus TV talk show. “I’m so done with the Britney coverage,” she said. “End it.”

Last week, I wrote to my editor at People and told her that I couldn’t continue working as a stringer for the magazine. I’m not being holier than thou. I wasn’t always kind to my brother about his illness. I scolded and nagged him. I called him lazy when he didn’t make his bed, unmotivated when he didn’t get a job and uncaring when he forgot our birthdays. It’s taken more than 20 years for me to understand, deep within my soul, that his mental illness is like a brain tumor, or cancer, or diabetes. It is a disease. It has symptoms such as anosognosia, which means that a person doesn’t think they have an illness, and flat affect, which saps emotional expressiveness. Right now, there is no cure.

When I realized not long ago how cruel I had been, I told my brother what I now tell Britney and her family: “I’m sorry.”

liz | 5:28 PM | Uncategorized