ABSTRACT
SOME OF the most vexing issues in today’s media ethics environment involve the notion of privacy. For society to function effectively, how much personal information should we have the legal right to know, the need to know, or merely an interest in knowing? What’s the difference between “the public interest” and “what the public is interested in?” What are we to make of mediated voyeurism, which might be relatively useful (televising Katie Couric’s colonoscopy may have saved some lives) or useless (knowing the contents of Anna Nicole Smith’s refrigerator hours before she died)? Does everyone deserve equal protection from the prying eyes of journalists, “big brother,” and market researchers? Do the ubiquitous social media contribute to the social need for civic engagement, public participation, and public record? How much control should we have to create and maintain our own reputations, let alone our physical space? Is the loss of privacy inevitable in this fast-paced, 24/7, interdependent, crowded world? When can mass com muni - cators or everyday users of social media justify taking away a person’s privacy to serve a greater good? Is privacy a completely relative term-significant in a liberal-democratic environment with its focus on individualized citizens, but far less relevant elsewhere, where community and relational identities differ? Is it more import - ant to older generations than it is to so-called millennials?
