‘Law & Order: SVU’ season 15 spoilers: More on Alec Baldwin, Mariska Hargitay, Katie Couric

Mariska Hargitay is directing an upcoming episode of “Law & Order: SVU” a little bit later on this season, and in case you haven’t heard just yet, Alec Baldwin is going to be appearing in it.

So who is he going to play? Luckily, it won’t be along the lines of someone who is going to deal with paparazzi constantly hunting him down on the street. Too much of art imitating life for us. Executive producer Julie Martin posted on Twitter that the character Baldwin will play is named Jimmy “Mac” MacArthur, and Deadline reports that his role will be a New York newspaper columnist who is questioned by a TV host (Katie Couric) about a case making headlines.

Clearly, this entire episode will examine the role of the media in discussing crimes, which has been a significant issue for some time, given their tendency to at times either aggrandize or sensationalize matters. Also, there is the issue of how much information you put in print, since this can at times also jeopardize cases and create worse problems for almost everyone involved.

This episode will air a little later this season, and we do very much believe that this will be one worth watching out for. Hopefully, we’ll have even more news and information to share on what this story is going to be over the course of the next several weeks … but until that time, we have some other stories to touch on and discuss.

Photo: NBC