PERSPECTIVE ON THE PRESS : Is There No Privacy Zone? : Why are we so fixed on building up and tearing down celebrities, and so afraid to talk about real issues?

Forcing Arthur Ashe to go public about having AIDS was outrageous. Has it shortened his life? Absolutely. It has ended it, as least as he was trying to live it. He can no longer stretch out each precious “normal” day with his family, since the news accounts have forced his wife and 5-year-old daughter to face the tragedy at accelerated speed and shattering volume.

The immediate defense from the press, starting with USA Today, which forced Arthur Ashe to go public, is that it serves the public interest to identify prominent people with AIDS. They say that it increases awareness--and therefore, theoretically, action--to fight back against AIDS.

That is specious. News organizations can write and broadcast about AIDS any time they want to. They do not need to have the news peg of another celebrity to do the right thing and educate the public about the AIDS crisis.

Some defenders of the USA Today story say that a public figure can’t have it both ways--cannot deliberately keep himself in the limelight with sports-equipment endorsements, and so forth, and then turn around and say, “I want to be a private person.”

This also misses the point. Journalists today have lost their bearings about what is public and what is private. They have lost it about coverage of our presidential candidates as well as about Arthur Ashe. Is there truly no moment of a public figure’s life that is not open to prurient exposure? Does being a political office-holder or, as in Ashe’s case, a sports champion, mean that the public owns all of your life, including your life in the bedroom, the doctor’s office, the church confessional or the psychiatrist’s couch?

In the presidential campaign coverage, matters of widely varying significance are treated equally, even when they are trivial or they are uncorroborated, in screaming headlines and serious discussions on ABC-TV’s “Nightline.” While some of these issues do deserve scrutiny and discussion, do we really think this “gotcha game” is doing a good job of screening our leaders? Why are we, as a press and a nation, so fixed on building up and tearing down celebrities, and so afraid to talk about the real issues at stake in our society?

No wonder the public thinks that the press is doing a lousy job. It puts more energy into tracking down adultery, pot parties and one-time legal-fee distributions than they do to holding people accountable for patterns of behavior that truly injure the public--such as the savings and loan debacle or the spread of environmental toxins.

We must think about this, all of us, if we are to enable leaders to lead. If we cannot provide relevancy or truth tests to the information that is broadcast, if we deny a privacy zone to a person simply because he or she is famous for something or running for office, then we deserve the kind of political culture we seem to be getting: a system in which image matters more than reality, a system of dissembling and diversion.

Instead of this endless and suicidal cycle of gossip, here are the kinds of things the press could help us to understand: What needs to be done next in the fight against Aids? When it comes to the presidential contest, does this candidate generally tell the truth and respect the public trust, or does he say one thing and do another? Is he willing to make tough choices and truly lead rather than simply following the popularity polls? How does he treat people who aren’t in power? What does he think will be his toughtest challenge as President, and who and what are the greatest obstacles going to be? Is he lining his pocket--or letting his friends line theirs’--at the taxpayers’ expense?

The “yellow” press has a long and florid tradition in this country of making private scandal into public entertainment. But today, most news organizations believe they are better than that. They believe that the First Amendment’s protection gives them a special elevated mandate beyond simply making money by appealing to the basest instincts of the population. And indeed, the media now have a much more important role in our democracy: filling in where our political parties, our educational system and our other institutions have dropped the ball.

Should journalists end their scrutiny of public figures? Of course not. But not every revelation serves the public interest. No American President--and few athletes, astronauts, journalists or other heroes--could have survived this Spanish Inquisition. Isn’t it time for the press to develop a more sophisticated sense of priorities and ethics to go along with its extraordinary new power?