The HIPAA Screen
This is by John Carvalho. He is a professor emeritus of journalism at Auburn University. He taught sports journalism and other courses there for 18 years.
For more than a year, the COVID virus has provided sports journalists with a variety of new challenges, both ethical and professional.
As we approach the 2021 college football season, and questions of vaccination remain, the debate is whether such questions are acceptable.
Every time a question comes up about an athlete’s or a coach’s vaccination, someone will warn against violating the individual’s privacy, and the term “HIPAA” will come up. The initials refer to the Health Insurance Portability and Privacy Act, which protects health information.
It’s a smokescreen. Health information is private and cannot be disclosed without the individual’s permission, but asking for the information does not constitute a violation.
It’s surprising that we don’t see the “HIPAA” play call more often. Constantly, questions are asked about players’ physical condition. Under this misinterpretation, Sharife Cooper’s ankle could have kept a squad of attorneys busy last season.
But of course, Sharife’s ankle is not the center of a politicized health concern, and in fact, athletes sign a release permitting the release of such information, but any time the topic is COVID, the first casualty is rational discussion.
So when Bryan Harsin was reported to have declined comment on whether he was vaccinated, the dividing line was set, with about half of the folks disappointed that he didn’t say and the other half saying that it was his right to not answer it under HIPAA.
My main disappointment was not Harsin’s personal vaccination status. He could have private reasons, including previous infection, for not answering. I wish he had made more of a public appeal for folks to get vaccinated, given the increasing hospitalizations and low vaccination rate in Alabama. He could do that without referencing his own status.
That got lost in the HIPAA smoke. Harsin was criticized for his lack of proactiveness on COVID and it somehow mashed up with the HIPAA debate. In my case, I’m guessing some folks thought that when I was talking about “leadership on the issue,” I was referring to his own getting vaccinated rather than using his platform.
Obviously, the question, from Giana Han of Alabama Media Group, was not a HIPAA violation; she was simply doing her job, asking a question that she knew readers were curious about. Harsin’s response, wise or unwise, was within his rights. He might have considered his introductory statements about working through team doctors to inform players to carry the rest of the issue, but he could have gone further.
I discussed the HIPAA issue a few years ago when Adam Schefter of ESPN published Jason Pierre-Paul’s medical records after Paul had a finger amputated following a fireworks accident. In a column, I speculated that Schefter was not guilty of a HIPAA violation, though whoever passed the records along to Schefter certainly was.
Schefter was guilty, in my opinion, of an ethical violation, by publishing private information, even if he did not bear the legal responsibility. His decision was that his audience would want to know such details, so he published the records (literally). I would not have chosen to go that far.
A similar double standard exists with college injuries. Fans want to know the medical condition of top players, private or not. Let’s stay that the situation was different, that under HIPAA or under FERPA–which covers all student records–a student-athlete could request that the specifics of an injury not be divulged, with just the game missed being reported (as is the case often with disciplinary suspensions).
Would fans be as understanding toward the athletes as they are toward coaches and their vaccination choices? Would they be equally understanding toward athletes from rival schools? Or would they ignore the players’ privacy and insist that all such information be released, even if their preferences represented a double standard?
Such is the craziness that likely will continue as long as COVID is with us. The problem will be with the variants–not only of the virus but also of the ethics media apply and fans demand in reporting it.
