Sleeping With The Enemy

In the days of Woodward and Bernstein, journalists got to the top of their profession by getting the story – interviewing their subjects, exhaustively researching public and private document, and poring over records. Nowadays, journalists are getting the story by getting on top of their subjects.

Last week, Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles confirmed that he and Mirthala Salinas, a local Telemundo reporter, had been having an affair for some time.

When the affair began, Salinas was covering Villaraigosa as a city hall reporter, but was reassigned by the station after she told them about the affair. As one of the station’s anchors, however, she was the one to announce that Villaraigosa and his wife were divorcing last month, without admitting her homewrecking role. That breach of journalistic etiquette is what caused the Los Angeles Daily News to break the affair story. It also forced Telemundo to place her on leave while it investigates the story.

Now Villaraigosa is being accused of another affair, this time with a city planning commissioner, who’s vehemently denied it. "I don't believe that the details of my personal life are relevant to my job as mayor," said Villaraigosa to reporters, adding, “Hey, anyone wanna go to the shot bar with me?”

Meanwhile, in our nation’s heartland, Chicagoans agonized over the disappearance of Lisa Stebic, who was last seen by her husband on the night of April 30. Over time, of course, suspicions began to center on Lisa’s husband, Craig, who was in the middle of divorcing her. Chicago’s TV stations fed the story with daily reports of search-and-rescue efforts, including efforts by divers to search local retention ponds. But Channel 2 reporter Amy Jacobson went the extra mile: she was videotaped hanging out by the Stebics’ pool in a bikini. When a rival station aired the video, her station fired her. Jacobson told the Chicago Sun-Times, “I'm crushed. I can't lie to you. I'm devastated." Warned by her superiors at the station to protect herself, she avers that she wore SPF 30 sunscreen “and reapplied each time I got out of the water.”