Was Outing Teacher's Gay Porno Background Ethical?

The Fox 25 reporter in Boston probably knew the subject of his story an English teacher who has made porn movies, would become the center of a nasty fire storm when his report aired.

That much is true. But now the reporter is becoming a bigger target of community wrath for airing his report.

In this image from Fox 25 Boston, reporter Mike Beaudet, right
confronts teacher Kevin Hogan about his past.

WXFT Fox 25 reporter Mike Beaudet confronted, on air, the Boston area English teacher about his, um, colorful and strenuous moonlighting gig. The English teacher has been in a couple gay porn movies, under the extremely unfortunate name Hytch Cawke.

The porn movies were done before he was hired at the school. So it's not as if he has to leave classes early to appear in his role in "Hytch does Hingham,"or some damn thing.

The English teacher, whose real name is Kevin Hogan, certainly got some criticism with Beaudet's expose.  But a funny thing happened on the way to the public lynching of Hogan. The community has largely turned its wrath onto Beaudet.

Aggressive investigative reporting is fine, the local community seems to be saying,  but if, and only if, the reporting uncovers wrongdoing, and does the public good. Comments on Fox 25's Web site are almost fully critical of Beaudet.

Many people are saying this was just a witch hunt/ambush against Hogan for no good reason. And that might reflect, at least in this case, a more sophisticated view of journalistic priorities and ethics among the public than that held by some news assignment editors.

As a journalist, I feel the tingle and thrill of finding out some juicy story about someone or something, and I'm sure the folks at Fox 25 felt the same way. The instinct is to pursue the damn thing.

But you've got to take a step back and say: "How will this help people understand things, serve a useful watchdog role and make things better?

Yes, that's doughy eyed self righteousness and idealism on my part, but there you go.

There's no question that if the teacher had somehow involved the students in his porn job, or had any other sexual or other improper contact with them, then the reporter should have gone after this guy, big time.

Hogan's supporters, and there are lots of them, are wondering why Beaudet did a report that will ruin Hogan's career. Few people are  seeing how this makes kids safer, or the school better and improve the community.

Beaudet counters, accurately, that teachers' licenses in Masschusetts require that educators be in good moral standing. But people both know pornography when they see it and morality when they see it. It's all in the eyes of the beholder.

And if Hogan was in porn films, that's still legal. There's no law against being in such films, as long as everybody involved were consenting adults. Even if the films were lousy. I wouldn't know. I have not seen "Cawkes'" films, "Fetish World" and "Just Gone Gay 8" They frankly don't sound very good.

Hogan's students don't seem to give a damn whether he was in gay porn or not. They want a good teacher, and say that Hogan is good.

The kids in Hogan's school are particularly unimpressed with Beaudet. One students Tweeted. "My English teacher is a gay porn star, #nbd." The hashtag stands for "No Big Deal."  A Facebook page has appeared demanding that Hogan keep his job and Beaudet lose his.  As of mid afternoon Thursday, the Facebook page had 1,450 "likes"

 The larger issue here is, in the hyperconnected world of Google, Facebook and Twitter, this story is much, much bigger than it merits. Which is the case with most things these days. Especially when an initial story causes a huge outcry, like this one.

 We were once, as children, threatened with having our misdeeds put on our Permanent Record if we didn't straighten out.

Now, misdeeds are put on our Permanent Record of Google no matter how quickly we correct our actions or minor the infraction.  And we have this Google Scarlet Letter even if we didn't do anything wrong, which many people say is the case involving Hogan.

Does Hogan deserve punishment? And if so, should that punishment take the form of permanent Internet infamy?  To the extent that an apparently talented teacher should never get another job in education?

His supporters don't think so, and are using social media to punish Beaudet the reporter.  Maybe Beaudet's report was not exactly newsworthy. Which also puts Beaudet's action on the Google Permanent Record. Maybe his reporting did more harm than good, or no good at all.   Given that, what does Beaudet deserve?

And what about the rest of us? Yes, most of us have not acted in bad gay porn movies. At least I hope not. (For the record, I haven't. Couldn't come up with a good stage name, I guess)

But we've all done stupid things. Everything we do now is writ large on the Internet.   Since there are no innocents in the world, will our world collapse under the weight of a far too big and heavy Permanet Record?