Week : Student Response to Discussion One and Two

ThursdayFeb 1 at 1:18am

Manage Discussion Entry

It is hard for me to determine whether the media was right to intrude in Tiger Woods’s privacy. To determine whether to intrude on someone’s privacy as a journalist, we should use the golden rule (Jacquette, 2007). It is difficult for me to use the golden rule here because I can never see myself in a situation where I cheat on my wife. I don’t think that the media was wrong for doing this necessarily, however, because I view what Tiger did as something very wrong that the public has a right to know about. If Tiger Woods didn’t want negative publicity from the media, he should not have committed adultery in the first place. As a celebrity, he must know that journalists will take advantage of any mistake made.

As a journalist with my own financial interests in mind, I find it hard to say that I could turn down an opportunity like a famous actor going to the emergency room in my county. While this is an invasion of privacy, when I use the golden rule here, I don’t think it would bother me if the media found out I was injured, as they are bound to find out when I’m wearing a cast for the next few months. While parading into the emergency room may not be very polite, it’s probably the only chance I’d get to get such a story. Mr. Rittenberg does not seem to be in a life-threatening situation here, so I think that getting the first scoop on this story would be a great career opportunity, and I don’t think that it is ethically wrong enough to make me pass the opportunity up.

Source:

Jacquette, D. (2007). Journalistic ethics: Moral responsibility in the media. Upper Saddle River: Pearson Education, Inc.