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April 3, 2008
Mind your own business...
I am definitely siding with Gordon on this one. While Reuss is correct in saying that the media SHOULD be the only judges of what they are doing about privacy, her point to me seems mute since it is clear that their ways of going about it are not working for anyone but wallets. They do not handle privacy as an ethical situation whatsoever. Sure I agree with the whole freedom business of the Constitution and all, but I don’t feel that our freedoms in any way give us the right to impose on others, no matter who they are. This chapter made me think a lot about what news really is and all I seem to get from it other than the weather segment is information that, for the most part is of no use to my life. Then I looked up synonyms for the word “news” on Microsoft Word and among them were hearsay and rumor!!! This made sense.
I feel that news and other media need to be transformed to a solely need-to-know basis. People are simply too nosey, but this doesn’t mean that companies need to cater to our faults. If we weren’t receiving the latest info on who killed who or what Brittany Spears was up to, I really don’t think anyone would loose sleep. This change would eliminate so many of the privacy issues of today. If there is a sniper running through my city, I need to know that. If someone splatters their brain in a car accident, this information is of no use to me. This brings me to the ridiculous uses of the phrases “right to know” and “newsworthy”. Someone’s tragic death is in no way anyone’s Constitutional right to have access to. The same goes for the publication of a rape victim’s name. I think, as does Gordon, that information obtained by the media should only come from the person the story is about (or the family in a case of death), and public records (for the sake of satisfying the outburst of freedoms being revoked, but personally I disagree with use of records also). Court cases are also a personal matter. If Joe Bob wants to tell you he was found guilty, that’s great. No one needed to know or had the right to know about the O.J. Simpson extravaganza.
The area of politicians is where it gets fuzzy. Sure, they are going to be the leaders of our country and we want to choose them right. The media often helps in the weeding out of the wrong ones for the job. However, I do not feel that revealing information about them that has nothing to do with how well they could perform their governmental duties is ethical. What Bill Clinton does in his bedroom really has nothing to do with how he’d run public policy. Information on the number of trips he took paid for by a lobbyist, however, may be something we’d need to know.
To go about these transformations would unfortunately, most likely require government involvement. Freedom is a personal luxury, and if some choose to use it in a way that harms others, there should be consequences. It is hard to think of the news not covering a car wreck or a court case, but society needs to take a step back, put themselves in someone else’s shoes, and decide if this kind information is really that valuable to their survival. It seems that more people need to learn the lesson of minding their own business.
Posted by asmithpaulson at April 3, 2008 10:03 PM