Press vs Privacy
Our countries technology is growing at an exponential rate which is opening the door for how we should deal with the fine line of freedom of press and privacy. This growth in technology has allowed the press to get their hands on information that many years ago would have been kept secret. It has allowed the press to do things that may be legal but yet are not morally good.
A recent example of this is the Ray Rice case. In this situation the press was able to get their hands on a video of him punching his wife. They released the video on TMZ so that all who wanted to watch it, could. While they were legally allowed to release this video, was it morally the right thing to do? While Ray Rice did something that was wrong and should not be over looked, it is not something that the press needs to be releasing to the public. This is a private matter that should have been dealt with by himself, his wife and the authorities. All the releasing of this video does is embarrass Ray and his Family. So now not only is his wife having to deal with the domestic violence issue but she is being forced to deal with all the unwanted media attention. So in a sense she is being doubly abused.
However, as much as I would like to be able to purely blame the press for all the immoral things that are being done involving personal privacy, we as a society only have ourselves to blame. I say this because the press, like any other business, survives by making money. The press makes money by selling papers and getting high ratings on television and radio. Well as a society we have gotten to a point where we don’t want to hear about things that really matter anymore. We care more about seeing Ray Rice punch his wife than we do about what’s going on in the world that could be affecting our lives. So it all starts with the people that are watching and reading the news. If we stop watching and asking for more of this sort of media then maybe they will stop giving it to us. We can complain all we want about how much we hate the fact that the press only cares about their ratings and how it’s not right that they can hack into people’s personal lives but it is not going to stop until we as a society stop feeding into the system.
