Commentary: Take the Spotlight off Stewart

Editors' note: On Fri., March 5, Martha Stewart was convicted by a jury on counts of conspiracy, making false statements, obstruction of justice and providing false documents. The securities fraud charge against Stewart was thrown out by the judge in her case on Feb. 27.

Many corporate executives helped send the economy into a tailspin, and few people wouldn't like to see those executives in jail. Kenneth Lay, Bernard Ebbers and the Rigas family ran companies whose accounting tricks devastated the retirement accounts and dreams of countless Americans.

Yet the media is shining the spotlight on Martha Stewart, whose alleged insider stock trade netted her a relatively paltry five-figure sum. Since the scandal about her questionable stock trade broke, she's been subjected to the kind of humiliation that her male peers, excluding Dennis Kozlowski perhaps, somehow escaped. (And in all fairness, the ridicule of Kozlowski primarily resulted from the footage of a wildy garish party in Sardinia.)

Stewart's personality, like that of any celebrity, has always been scrutinized. A shrewd, straightforward businesswoman, Stewart built a billion-dollar empire from scratch. She became the nation's czar of domestic style, churning out cookbooks, furniture lines and television shows. Before the scandal, she appeared so wholesome and so controlled that Saturday Night Live spoofed her by having an actress portray her topless.

But while a meteoric rise is a great story, a meteoric fall is even better. Ms. Perfect is the perfect target. It's fun to describe her color-coordinated clothes while she's tarred and feathered.

Stewart has been described as one of a long list of "high-heeled, high-strung" female defendants comparable to Leona Helmsley. Headlines like "Martha's Mess" poked fun at her carefully composed and managed image and domestic empire. There were the inevitable jokes about Martha in prison: how she might decorate her cell, or improve the food. Reporters have noted her ambition, aggressive personality and ruthless business sense, as if it were somehow evidence of guilt. She may not be the warmest person in real life, but did her alleged misdeeds result in high unemployment figures and an anemic stock market? Many of her unappealing qualities would likely be praised in a male business executive.

So Stewart became America 's No. 1 bad girl, eclipsed only recently by Janet Jackson, whose breast was exposed in a poorly conceived publicity stunt at the Super Bowl half-time show. Coincidentally, Jackson also took the fall for a problem far larger than her own naughty behavior -- American anger at a mass culture that brazenly flirts with pornography. But it's Viacom, through its MTV and CBS subsidiaries, that cast that jarringly juvenile half-time show.

Jackson ended up apologizing for her publicity stunt in a teary, videotaped confession. But Stewart has yet to give in, except for displaying articles critical of her trial on a Web site, www.marthatalks.com.

Months ago, when given the opportunity to make a televised bid for sympathy, Stewart dryly said she preferred to concentrate on her salad. And she took even more heat for that. Granted, the business desks of most newspapers have refrained from personally attacking Stewart. While the blow-by-blow accounts of the trial may be balanced, it's the sheer volume of coverage that isn't. At the very worst, the focus on Stewart is a distraction from the pursuit of corporate subjects more deserving of ridicule. Perhaps we should take the spotlight off Stewart and put it where it belongs.

Click here for a timeline of notable dates in the Stewart investigation.

Copyright © 2008 Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism