Privacy Of Public Figures example essay topic

Informational revolution is in control of the world. Digital equipment has brought a unification of all information related sectors. They are telecommunications, media, and information technology. Altogether of that has made possible the globalization of communication, social relations, and economy. Original communications media were, not only, separate and operated on different networks; they also were regulated by different laws and special regulators, and of course all of that at a national level. Nearly all recent regulations came at a time when differences between sectors were clear.

Moreover, they have a national focus which is increasingly unsuitable as the services market becomes international. In other words, existing regulatory frameworks having been defined for a national, analogue, and mono-media environment are now insufficient to deal with the present global, digital, and multi-media environment. In the name of achievement of public interest objectives, out of date rules and differing national regulations hamper the creation of new services and markets, and give rise to barriers to the free flow of information and global exchange of ideas. The need for an adequate regulatory framework at an international level is obvious. The law applies equally to everybody, of course, but what it does recognize is that there is a greater interest in the private lives of public figures. Zeta Jones and her husband Michael Douglas say their private life was violated when the celebrity magazine published unauthorized photographs of their wedding day.

Guests were banned from taking pictures but undercover photographers gate crashed the wedding and sold photographs to Hello! Who had missed an exclusive on the ceremony to OK! Magazine. Their case comes just days after Michael Jackson complained to television watchdogs about a controversial documentary which he claims "utterly betrayed" him.

That is precisely why cases like the Douglas's case come to court and why they reach such a high public profile. So what the courts are trying to reconcile is the idea that even a public figure does have a right to privacy against the public interest in receiving information about them. And the court is in the process, at the moment, of going through on a case by case basis trying to lay down some rules and balance the competing interests of an individual's right to privacy and the public interest in receiving information about them and indeed the media's right to freedom of expression to broadcast or to publish that information about them. There are many regulations, through various regulators' codes, the Press Complaints Commission's own code, and various broadcasting codes lay down requirements pertaining to privacy, when it's permissible or not for the media to interfere with a person's private rights. And generally, largely, there is always a public interest - a justification that the media have to make out for any broadcast or publication which they " ve made. Therefore one of the issues that's being fought out through the courts is the extent to which that self-regulation, that self-imposed regulation, is sufficient to protect individual rights or whether the courts themselves need to develop the case law so as to give remedies where the regulators themselves don't do that.

This case is only the second case since the Human Rights Act was introduced and that's the Act which actually gives people, for the first time, a right to respect for their private life, so called. For many years there's been a breach of confidence, which is essentially an equitable remedy on which people have been able to prevent publication of information that is imparted in circumstances of confidence. Media should respect privacy of public figures. Public figures are constantly being harassed and photographed by the media. Some photographers and reporters will go to any means, even illegal actions, to get a picture or story. However, public figures are human beings like everyone else, and the media should give them more privacy.

The media needs to operate with more respect for both laws and for moral and ethical codes of conduct. There are laws establishing the privacy of an individual, and the media needs to extend these rights to public figures. Most of us who are concerned about the continuation of Americas constitutional freedoms, which underlie a free enterprise system that has made us the most prosperous nation in history, realize that the most dangerous foe of those freedoms is the mass media, especially television and daily newspapers. You dont have to be too smart when you listen to the evening news or read the daily newspaper to notice that big government and socialist solutions to society's problems are featured favorably, while the achievements of our free enterprise system are denigrated. Since the birth of communication, media has been used to convey information to those willing to absorb it. Beginning with publications and simple spoken words, and soaring to new heights in the twentieth century with radio, television, and the internet, media have been made accessible to people in every aspect of their daily lives.

With such a strong hold on modern society, mass media have been able to shape popular culture and often influence public opinion. However, when abused, the power of media can harm the general population. Subjective media tend to make people strive to be someone else's idea of perfect while subconsciously ignoring their own goals. Stereotypes created by the media that include thin, tanned women, and wealthy, muscular men have led to a decline in self-acceptance. The mass of media today often present the perfect body to the public, hoping that consumers will strive to achieve fitness using a certain product or idea. Medias target audience is people and they should focus on bringing on the news and information by any means excluding any types of harassment towards human privacy.

Therefore people will be happy and objectives will be encountered..