By:
February 9, 2009

Prop 8 maps, a mashup of Google Maps and Prop 8 Donors, shows the names of those who contributed money to the passage of California’s Proposition 8, which prohibits same-sex marriage. The mashup also shows the streets where these people live.

This kind of mashup is useful, but to some, it’s also intrusive and scary. While these contribution records are public record, the idea that your name and mapped street are online could be considered unnecessarily invasive. The mashup offers great information, but is the backlash and privacy invasion worth it? 

This particular mashup, while not on a news site, raises questions about when and how journalists should use this type of online application.

The Olympian‘s Ruth Schneider, who covers GLBT and queer issues, recently noted:

Majority of the donors are in California, the borders of the state did not constrain the contributions. They can be found in our state, our county, our neighborhood, our backyard. I zoomed in on that map and found two people with addresses in DuPont who donated to the campaign. And a project manager with a Tumwater address donated $100. I called him. Tobin Faucheaux called me back. While he was unaware the Web site listed his location and name, he wasn’t surprised by it. Nor was he upset. “I made that decision when I made the donation,” Faucheaux said of the public disclosure.

But not all Proposition 8 supporters are like Faucheaux.

Some don’t like being found — so much so that a group of supporters filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court in Sacramento seeking a preliminary injunction of a California law that requires disclosure of donors of $100 or more.

“This is designed to protect the integrity of the political process,” said Shannon Minter, legal director for the National Center for Lesbian Rights.

“The lawsuit is troubling. The lawsuit makes me wonder,” he said.

In a surprising twist of irony, it has become unacceptable to be discriminatory, so they are creating their own closet.

“It’s odd to me that people who oppose equality for a certain group of people don’t want to stand up and oppose it,” said Toni Broaddus, executive director of Equality Federation, a national network of more than 60 state-based lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender advocacy organizations.

An editorial in The Wall Street Journal said:

Ironically, it has long been minorities who have benefited the most from anonymous speech. In the 1950s, for example, Southern states sought to obtain membership lists of the NAACP in the name of the public’s “right to know.” Such disclosure would have destroyed the NAACP’s financial base in the South and opened its supporters to threats and violence. It took a Supreme Court ruling in NAACP v. Alabama (1958) to protect the privacy of the NAACP and its supporters on First Amendment grounds. And more recently, it has usually been supporters of gay rights who have preferred to keep their support quiet.

There is another problem with publicizing donations in political elections: It tends to entrench powerful politicians whom donors fear alienating. If business executives give money to a committee chairman’s opponent, they often fear retribution.

This kind of online ethics issue will no doubt continue to come up as more news organizations experiment with mashups in the future.

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Al Tompkins
Al Tompkins is one of America's most requested broadcast journalism and multimedia teachers and coaches. After nearly 30 years working as a reporter, photojournalist, producer,…
Al Tompkins

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