ABSTRACT
The protection of privacy has been important in democratic societies for more than a century. Most of the effort on this idea has come from law and political science, but with the technological revolutions in the media legal understandings of and protections for the right to privacy are inadequate. From an ethical perspective, privacy is not merely an individual right but is a human condition and is fundamentally moral. Journalists who recognize this deeper and bigger perspective need ethical guidelines for implementing it. With internet technology creating the greatest challenges, this chapter focuses on privacy in the digital age. Three aspects of that focus are examined: privacy issues in everyday internet use, the issues that arise from commercial big data companies, and surveillance by governments using electronic data.
