“Many newspapers, magazines and television programmers make money by reporting on the private lives of public figures such as politicians, sports personalities and entertainers. While the media’s right to freedom of expression should be defended, the media should not intrude into people’s private affairs.” To what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement above?
After the growth of media in the twentieth century, people who had earned name and fame have always been in the center of the media receiving the attention of the medias and the public. The media whereby the public figures and their behaviors has always been the subject of media reporting, commenting, criticizing and praising always followed the famous persons and celebrities. But, later with the growth of private media, the competition in the industry has raised to the highest point where they were forced to present the programs that could attract more number of viewer with highest TRP (Duarte, 2014). So, on this regard, the media has started to put the private life of the famous persons under the spotlight. This kind of action of the media has raised a serious question regarding whether or not the private life or after-work life of the famous persons and celebrities should be covered by the media for whatever reason and pay high respect to the privacy of the famous persons. My very personal opinion on this subject is that though the media has right to obtain the information and express it freely to the public or at times even expose the private life of some celebrities and public figures for the public awareness, the media do not have right to expose the life of everyone in the name of the media freedom. So, I only slightly agree to the point that the media has right to expose the private life of public figures. In many situations, media do not have any right to interfere the private life and privacy of a celebrity or a public figure.
In a technical sense, every country has granted a right to privacy for every single individual, and at the today’s world the privacy concern is given the highest priority. However, the term privacy seems to be indistinguishable or vague from the publicity when an individual with public fame uses the happenings in his or her private life or the private affairs to drag the attention of the public to obtain the power and influence. This is often called as a publicity stunt. The celebrity deliberately pushes their private affair in the media. To take an example, some of the celebrities often leak their vacation photos in the media to get the public attention. In some cases, a struggling actor might date a established and famous celebrity or create an event that will put him or her in the limelight. In the event function, some celebrities appear with boyfriend or girlfriend. They even appear in the public places in glamorous and luxurious fashionable clothes so that they get caught in the eye of the producers, directors, fans, medias and advertisers. Once Paris Hilton was not so famous celebrity. She, quite often, pushed her private matters in the media to catch the limelight and gain fame in the industry. In the case of Paris Hilton, such private matters were her sex tape, her lifestyle and her family background. However, it is not always the media who digs the personal and private matters of the celebrities and broadcast it, the celebrities too expect the medias to cover their private and personal life especially when they make money or they get benefit from such publicity stunt.
I agree that individual freedom is very important and everyone must respect it. But, the media persons has exploited this personal freedom so much that that have started peeping deep inside the personal life of public figures and collect and report any type of information, cover stories and news of the public celebrities that was not supposed to be made public.
One group of people argue that the media must have right and freedom to obtain, retain and broadcast the information about anything because the public depend on the media to obtain the information. Giving right to the media to obtain the information is ultimately making the public aware and respecting their right to information. This too is very crucial for media to effectively play its role as a mirror of the society. Some people or the families are born to be in the eyes of the public or they are born to be the news for the people. The marriage of the prince of the United Kingdom is a matter of concern for all the people around the world or the news about the president of the Untied States of America is the concern for many peoples in the world because his act and his decision always affects the global politics and economy.
Politicians seem to have the least level of privacy of all the public figures. Officials of the Government and politicians are the people who have the power to decide and formulate laws, which have great effect on each individual of the country and also the world. Thus, it is deemed that the public has the right to be informed about what is happening in the lives of these politicians. There are also arguments that the work of the politician should be the center of attention rather than his or her life at the personal level (Doyne, 2016). However, it cannot be debated that the quality of work performance is affected by an individual’s personal life. Additionally, there may be some activities that are done by the politicians, which are not in favor of the public benefit because of personal matters of his or her life. These may include spending the money that has been received from local taxpayers for buying of personal property. One such real life incidence has been observed in the case of former president of France, who bore the expenses of a foreign trip with his illegal daughter and secret mistress from the expenses of the state. He even made the guards protect their residence, which was indeed the illegal use of state properties.
When issues of this type come in the public eye, media is the one who becomes the watchdog of public interest. If there is no scrutiny of the media for the exposure of personal life of such politicians, there would be great damage to democracy and corruption would be rampant. There are real lives proofs of instances where limited press freedom results in loss for the public. Countries such as North Korea, Iran, Nepal, Myanmar, Iran, where there is limited press freedom, almost to the least degree, have the lowest form of democracy or no levels of democracy, along with alarming rate of corruption.
The additional responsibility of journalists also include assuring that there is a match between the persona of a public figure and the inner self of that personality. This may specially apply in case of those celebrities who willingly make an appealing public image. There are enough celebrities in our society, mostly pop stars and politicians who vouch for social issues such as racial discrimination end and children welfare around the globe. However, in real lives they may be the ones who are playing with ethics, and leaving over meals after their dinner or even keeping a child slave at their or their relative’s places. There should be reporting of such kind of hypocrisy in the public eye.
There is an additional side of the argument, which says that public figures are not willingly on the public eye center of attraction, rather it is because they have been forced. Thus, the media should keep away from intruding the private lives of these people. For instance, in cases where a hockey player wants to do his best at the game and stand as the captain of the winning team, but he apparently cheats on his wife. He should not be the center of attraction by getting criticisms from the media for this. Having said all this, there is plenty of time when a public figure is taken as a role model for the talent and traits that he or she possesses, and thus there is affect of the immorality on a larger audience of people. But, if the focus of a public figure is only to excel in the specific field that he or she is related to and wants to keep personal life under wraps, there should not be breach of privacy of these individuals.
The First Amendment in the law is the shield that the paparazzi use for defending their skeptic tactics for gathering various piece of news that is supposed to be protected. The disputes among celebrities and paparazzi is generally settled outside of the court, which is partly because of the symbiotic relationship between the celebrity and paparazzi, which makes celebrities have retribution fear. But, the increasing rise in the altercations between the media and the celebrities reflects a suggestion that celebrities are tired and fed up of media tantrums. In such cases, there are some forms of recourses that these celebrities might think of resorting to.
It is quite clear that there is need for some form of celebrity protection at the legal levels from high level of paparazzi that they face at day to day levels. The major issue here is the level of protection to be given to celebrities or public figures and if the same is done, how the rights of the public for unbiased, free flow of information can be ensured (Why Media Role Models Matter, 2016).
The common law that is prevalent at present makes it tough for celebrities for maintenance of action course for privacy invasion against paparazzi. The recourse of a celebrity against media also becomes limited because of the tension among protection of celebrity rights and permission for expression of free speech in the room. There is granting of press freedom in the first amendment, but though these amendments can function as protection for the photographs or attention from the paparazzi, there is no protection to the media from the offensive ways that they may use for the gathering of news of public figures and the ways in which they do so. The photograph or video that is used in a news title and story may be considered an element that comes into the speech protection for the First Amendment, however, the techniques used for news gathering or the photograph, however tort it may be, cannot be included in the purview of guarantees given by the First Amendment.
I hold a strong belief that there should be higher level of protection to the celebrities from media given the current level of interference. Every individual has the right to live life in such as way that the privacy of lifestyle is maintained and the success of individual at the professional level is not affected. There have been sudden incidents recently where domestic abuse was the main agenda. However, these issues of personal life also affected the professional lives of the associated artists. At the time when these accused celebrities try to take a step in their professional career, media plays a villain and digs up their past related to their personal lives. This means that the perception of public towards the professional work of these individuals also changes and thus their work and work results are affected. Chris Brown and Michael Jackson could be taken as the celebrities who have been a victim of the same (Should celebrities be more protected from the media?, 2016).
References
'Does Media Interfere Too Much With The Personal Lives Of Celebrities?' (Careerride.com, 2016) <http://www.careerride.com/view.aspx?id=12494> accessed 14 July 2016
Doyne S, 'Should The Private Lives Of Famous People Be Off Limits?' (The Learning Network, 2016) <http://learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/17/should-the-private-lives-of-famous-people-be-off-limits/?_r=1> accessed 14 July 2016
Duarte D, 'Respect My Privacy: Paparazzi Vs. Celebrity' (The Dotted Line Reporter, 2014) <http://dlreporter.com/2014/02/13/respect-my-privacy-paparazzi-vs-celebrity/> accessed 14 July 2016
Knorr C, 'Why Media Role Models Matter' (Commonsensemedia.org, 2012) <https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/why-media-role-models-matter> accessed 14 July 2016
'Should Celebrities Be More Protected From The Media?' (Debate.org, 2016) <http://www.debate.org/opinions/should-celebrities-be-more-protected-from-the-media> accessed 14 July 2016
Why Media Role Models Matter. (2016). Commonsensemedia.org. Retrieved 14 July 2016, from https://www.commonsensemedia.org/blog/why-media-role-models-matter
