Did Bonnie Fuller really betray women?

Female editors condemn the Globe for running a tawdry photograph of Kobe Bryant's accuser.

By Rebecca Traister

Oct. 31, 2003 | The ugliest celebrity spectacle of the year -- the sexual assault prosecution of NBA star Kobe Bryant -- took a notable turn Thursday, when the supermarket tabloid the Globe published a salacious high school photograph of the accuser on its cover. In it, the woman is lifting up her prom dress to reveal a garter belt. The headline reads: "Kobe Bryant's Accuser: Did She Really Say No?" Next to the photo, in half-inch type, is the 19-year-old woman's name.

The world -- particularly the journalism world -- does not usually pay close attention to the scandal sheets. But there is good reason to this time. For one: the Globe's behavior has been followed in the past by the mainstream media. Back in 1991, it was the Globe that broke with the journalistic tradition of protecting the identity of possible rape victims and revealed the name of the woman accusing Kennedy scion William Kennedy Smith of raping her. NBC and the New York Times eventually followed suit.

The other reason, though, is because the influence of the tabloid press has undeniably increased in recent years. And a main reason for that is the woman -- and lightning rod -- editorially in charge of the Globe: Bonnie Fuller.

Fuller, a veteran editor (Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Marie Claire and YM), spent the past two years revamping the weekly celebrity gossip magazine Us Weekly with enormous success. At a time when circulation and advertising sales were on the skids for magazines, Fuller raised Us' newsstand sales a whopping 55 percent. This summer, she left Us to take on the editorial directorship of American Media, the company that publishes the Sun, the Globe and the National Enquirer, for a package reported to be worth more than $1 million. Though she has focused most directly on the rejuvenation of the company's flagship magazine, the Star, Fuller technically presides over the editorial decisions for each of American Media's titles, including the Globe.

Fuller told the New York Post that she knew of the Globe's plans to publish the name and photo of the woman but said that she "would not have interjected" herself into the magazine's editorial structure by killing the story. "The Globe did what was within their mission," she told the Post.

"Bonnie did not make the decision to put that [image, name, and headline] on the cover. Candace Trunzo, the editor of the Globe, did," said Richard Valvo, vice president of corporate communications for American Media, adding, "Bonnie made the decision not to pull it." (Fuller was out of town and unavailable for comment; Trunzo did not return calls.)

One, however, could easily argue that deciding "not to pull" a story is the same thing as deciding to run with one.

"She's the editorial director of the company," said Barbara O'Dair, editor at large at Time Inc., and the former editor in chief of Teen People and Us Weekly. "She obviously gave her tacit approval."

And if the Globe's big reveal on the identity of Bryant's accuser gets picked up by other publications reporting stories like this one, the arm of the tabloid press will have extended even further into the legitimate press.

"The tabloidization of the American media is horrid and unstoppable," said Stephen Isaacs, a professor of journalism at the Graduate School of Journalism at Columbia University, who teaches a class on ethics. Mr. Isaacs, who is somewhat unorthodox in his view that journalists should publish the names of accusers in rape cases, went on, "I think naming her is cool, but running a picture of her with a garter belt -- that's mawkish and obviously meant to sell papers. That is the tabloidization of the American press."

For many people, the line between the tabloid press and the legitimate press is already indistinguishable, said Geneva Overholser, a professor of journalism at the Washington bureau of the University of Missouri School of Journalism and the former ombudsman of the Washington Post. Overholser had not seen the cover of the Globe, but after hearing a description of the layout, she called it "the worst kind of journalistic voyeurism." She, like Isaacs, believes that situations like the Kobe Bryant case serve as an argument for making the identification of alleged rape victims standard.

"If we named them in the mainstream media, it wouldn't be such a catch for the tabloids," she said. "There wouldn't be such a forbidden, look-at-me thing."

But to magazine editors in New York, particularly women editors, the ethics involved in naming a possible rape victim took a back seat to the look-at-me nature of the Globe's cover.

"I think every female editor who woke up this morning and saw that in the paper probably had their breath taken away," said Us Weekly's editor in chief Janice Min. "I just looked at it and thought, Oh my God, that's so wrong."

Min was not critical of Fuller, her predecessor, saying only, "I think it probably got additional attention because Bonnie is there and she came from the mainstream press and that is why it came across as an unusual decision."

But Min did not hold her fire when it came to the Globe's editorial decisions.

"It is misogynistic and truly exploitative to try to get big sales off of identifying an alleged rape victim," said Min. "Was a woman dressed inappropriately? Did she ask for it? Is a sexy woman more likely to get raped than a non-sexy woman? These are the anachronistic, horrible ideas that come up because of a cover like that. Morally, it's wrong."

Min's objections were strongest when it came to the cover-photo choice.

"I would imagine that they probably have plenty of photos to choose from," she said. "I don't think any of them would have been right to run. The fact that they chose to run one of her in lingerie is galling.

"It is clearly implied on the cover that maybe she deserved it," Min continued. "This is someone's worst nightmare. This is why a lot of sexual assault victims don't come forward."

Next page: "Out of deference to the victim, you do not publish an image of her face. You just don't do it"