There is a conflict that I’ve been dealing with lately, and deciding which side I land on sometimes keeps me up at night.

I work in a profession in which it’s not only necessary, but encouraged to upset an established order. It’s encouraged for a journalist to ask the tough questions and make people accountable for the actions they take.

It’s encouraged to pry.

But I also work as a sports journalist, and athletes present a different situation altogether. While they are inherently different than public officials, our celebrity-obsessed culture puts athletes on such a pedestal that it can be hard to tell the difference.

There are different rules when covering the personal lives of public officials and athletes, but the line is often blurred when subject matter is sensitive.

That said, the newest information in the Steve McNair murder case just did not hit me right.

Nashville police released its case summary Monday, and contained in it was an account of many text messages between McNair and Sahel Kazemi, who he was seeing at the time. These messages detailed what Kazemi was going through at the time, as well as conversations between the two during their last day alive.

Nothing contained in the text messages was an earth-shattering revelation: I just don’t realize why it needs to be made public. I understand they needed to be included in a case summary, but the content of the messages themselves doesn’t need to be reported by various news outlets.

CNN reported numerous quotes from the texts in an update on its Web site.

Do news organizations just drool over what they see as “juicy details” or do they really think the information is extremely pertinent?

Does publishing these messages help the families of the victims move on? At some point, sensitivity toward the plight of those involved in a tragic story needs to take priority over reporting every single detail of a story.

If people want to read the text messages, let them read the case summary themselves.

I realize that, in effect, athletes are public figures and the level of interest in their lives is greatly magnified. At some point, though, we need to learn to let these people lead their lives with the same level of privacy that we would appreciate in ours.

However necessary, that will never happen. I know that as I continue to read the news on a daily basis, I’ll continue to see levels of detail that will bother me further.

The journalist in me can semi-understand why these types of things would be broadcasted. The person I am has trouble coming to terms with why they are.

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