Naming Names
In 2003, Leykis raised controversy by revealing the name of Katelyn Faber, the accuser in the Kobe Bryant sexual assault case. Other media outlets elected to reveal details of the alleged victim such as race and masked photographs while excluding her name, as was the standard practice at that time, raising privacy questions.
Major media outlets generally and voluntarily withhold names like these due to their adherence to journalism ethics and standards. The policy in practice only applies to alleged victims however, allowing for the release of names of alleged offenders, a policy Leykis disagrees with, and does not follow as he regularly states he is "not a journalist". Leykis contends that either all names in a case (the alleged offender(s) and the alleged accuser) should be protected or all should be public.
The radio show host has caused considerable controversy over the years for his practice of identifying such individuals by name on-air. Other such individuals he has named include:
- Vanessa Perhach, who accused Marv Albert of forcible sodomy (biting) in 1997.
- Angela Song, a woman associated with the Christian Coalition of America who tried to commit suicide by jumping off a bridge in Seattle, Washington.
- Kate Faber, the woman who accused Kobe Bryant of rape.
- An accused child molester in SeaTac.
- Vili Fualaau, the 13-year-old victim of statutory rape by teacher Mary Kay Letourneau.
- Kenneth Pinyan, the Boeing Co. employee dropped off at a Seattle hospital dead from a perforated colon, later found to have engaged in bestial sexual intercourse with a horse.
- Crystal Gail Mangum, a stripper, escort and student at North Carolina Central University, who falsely accused three Duke University students – members of the lacrosse team of rape, battery, and sodomy in what became known as the 2006 Duke University lacrosse case.
Read more about this topic: Leykis 101, The Tom Leykis Show, Notable Occurrences
Famous quotes containing the words naming and/or names:
“The night is itself sleep
And what goes on in it, the naming of the wind,
Our notes to each other, always repeated, always the same.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)
“All nationalisms are at heart deeply concerned with names: with the most immaterial and original human invention. Those who dismiss names as a detail have never been displaced; but the peoples on the peripheries are always being displaced. That is why they insist upon their continuity—their links with their dead and the unborn.”
—John Berger (b. 1926)