Elise Butler (left) and Renee Daggert check their e-mail and accounts on Facebook.

When Jason Jung, of Los Angeles, chose to write an article about binge drinking, he found sources willing to divulge the details of their drinking habits by approaching people in a liquor store.

A young woman in the store agreed to talk to him, admitting that she regularly downed about 12 drinks every night.

“I told her if she felt uncomfortable, she didn’t have to answer,” Jung said. “So it was just a human being telling another human being.”

While Jung said his source agreed to talk because of his ability to make the woman comfortable answering tough questions, he said that if he was being interviewed, he wouldn’t answer his own questions. He said that while he respected the craft, he wouldn’t want his life to become public business.

This summer, journalism cherubs at the National High School Institute tackled privacy issues in journalism. Professor Craig LaMay gave two lectures about libel laws and the privacy issues that journalists deal with on a regular basis.

In his lecture, LaMay told students that privacy is affected by two main issues: social norms and technology.
LaMay warned students that everything they post to Facebook and other social networking sites is fair game for college admissions and potential employers, reminding them that anything they do on the Internet will stay there for years.

LaMay said news judgment is also part of privacy, citing the current presidential election as an example.

“In the presidential campaign, personal information about the candidates is called news,” LaMay said. “The idea that we have to know everything about someone’s character hasn’t elected any good ones lately.”

So where do journalists draw the line?

“Treat people the way you want to be treated, you know, the golden rule and all that,” LaMay said. “Regardless of who they are, people deserve a basic amount of respect. Journalists shouldn’t see people as opportunities.”

When Lexi Sasanow, of New York, was writing an article about Iraq veterans returning from war with post-traumatic stress disorder, she conducted what she said was a sensitive interview with a veteran.

“Bringing up something he’d repressed was something that I had never really experienced,” Sasanow said.

She said that asking the tough questions may have been an invasion of privacy, but that her source was open with her, making her “a better reporter.”

“It was an important experience for me as a writer,” Sasanow said.

Cherubs drew from experiences like this to form their own opinions about what it means to get too personal.

“What concerns me the most is when journalists get in people’s face without approval,” Jung said. “When I ask someone a question, they don’t have to answer, but if I run up to someone with a camera and take a picture, that bothers me.”