Yesterday I wrote a few words about some problems I have with the Morning News’ 18,000-word story, titled “My Aryan Princess,” about a government informant named Carol Blevins and how she helped bust a bunch of guys in the Aryan Brotherhood of Texas. My biggest problem with the story centers on Blevins’ mental health. As the writer, Scott Farwell, acknowledged in his piece:
Medical records suggest Carol suffers from a range of mental illnesses — bipolar disorder, borderline personality disorder, and post-traumatic stress disorder — as a result of her work as a confidential informant.
She’s been committed to psychiatric hospitals at least 20 times in the last decade.
Writing so intimately about such a troubled woman seemed to me like an unwise move. Now comes a bit of back patting from the News’ editorial department, which writes:
It’s a textbook case of just how insidious drug abuse can be, and how it can fuel mental illness. And it underscores a long campaign by this newspaper to advocate for improvements in the mental health system, both locally and statewide.
As a colleague put it to me: “Boy, they are really using the whole buffalo on this one.” Indeed they are. Now the paper wants to claim the story is about mental health, not just “a seat-of-the-pants crime drama” and “a gritty and voyeuristic journey,” which is how Farwell described his story in the story itself. Nor did he mention “underscoring a long campaign” by the paper to “advocate for improvements in the mental health system” in this NBC Channel 5 promotional piece on the story. To me, it seems that if the paper cares so much about advocating for mental health issues, it could start with Carol Blevins. Is stripping her life bare in an 18,000-word seat-of-the-pants crime drama the best thing for her health?
I asked someone I know. He’s a mental health counselor who has worked with a lot of people who fit Blevins’ profile. He read the relevant parts of “My Aryan Princess.” His take:
“Sick and exploitive are two words that come to my mind. When you’ve worked within populations of individuals meeting the criteria of the diagnoses mentioned in the article, the author is exploiting a vulnerable and impaired person. The risks are huge considering how often individuals in fringe groups as this [meaning the ABT] suffer from mental illness.”
We in the media all have to be marketers to a certain degree. In social media and in our own pages, we have to call people to our stories and entice them to read. But if I were the Morning News, I’d be extra cautious with this one.
