"Ratings had nothing to do with our (restroom) story," claimed J. W. August, Channel 10's producer. The trouble, it seems, is that in reporting upon one law broken, namely restroom sex erupting on campus, KGTV seems to have broken another.

Penal Code Section 647(k) makes "Anyone who looks through a hole or opening, into, or ortherwise views, by means of any instrumentality, including, but not limited to, a periscope, telescope, binoculars, camera, or camcorder, the interior of a bathroom, changing room, fitting room, dressing room, or tanning booth, or the interior of any other area in which the occupant has a reasonable expectation of privacy, with the intent to invade the privacy of a person or persons inside." guilty.

The financial teeth implanted in this Penal Code Section's provisions, unfortunately, are scarcely enough to retain a plaintiff's lawyer, reflecting the scant value accorded to privacy by the framers of the law. To be guilty of violating 647(K), as KGTV has apparently done, is to be punishable by a fine of only $1,000 and/or six months in jail.

In Houston, Texas, KPRC (Channel 2) was drawn to the "new news" rage, or News in Restrooms reportage, by a web site's carefully compiled tearoom listings used also in San Diego, a site, cruisingforsex.com, that tells where proliferating public sex may be experienced anonymously and in semi-private settings, listings pinpointing every such clandestine locale in the world. The result of Texan TV sleuthing was that the KPRC news-beat showcased titillating KPRC excursions into men's restrooms at Sears, Hyatt, and The University of Houston. As a result each of these corporate giants gulped and golly-geed.

In San Diego, Karen Marshall, a local gay and lesbian activist, put her finger pointedly on the unintended cans of worms TV News intrusiveness has opened in "polite" circles. The ratio of marrieds among the park and tearoom brigades arrested is, as entrapment- police blotters show, high. "It's really a lot of people who are hiding," explained Marshall to reporters, "They may be married or they may have girlfriends, but because of homophobia they're afraid to be seen."

Police claim to be too busy to deal with such instances of public sex. This is contradicted by the San Diego area's rise in recent months in sex arrests, especially in one of the city's major parks.

Though KGTV appears to have broken the law by invading private spaces, none of those who were filmed violating customary tearoom decorum and who were photographed doing so, appear ready to retain a lawyer to represent them against the station. The small fine and the unwanted publicity surrounding such a case would not tempt a closet mentality.

It will take a tearoom cruiser in search of illusory and dubious fame to challenge KGTV in the courts. Such a challenger's poorly paid motivation must, of necessity, be a fierce devotion to the ideal of privacy.