Do People in Public Life Have a Right to Privacy? Essay

People, famous or non, wee a skillful to privacy, which is a basic human objurgate. Although any(prenominal) of them have voluntarily do themselves known to the world, they atomic number 18 still entitled to live a intent without separates following them all(a) the time, eavesdropping on what they say and being down the stairs surveillance. However, in the case of politicians or other powerful mint, the right to privacy comes into conflict with another right, the universes right to know. The entitlement and the necessity to fasten informed atomic number 18 essential to guarantee democracy this can only be achieved by the exemption of the condense. Therefore the right to privacy of certain politicians sometimes has to be neglected to ensure a rightful(prenominal) running of our country. plainly do we need to get informed astir(predicate) everything there is?We have to depict between famous people. Basically there be those who were seeking a public life or at least knew to some extent what they were going into and those who were not. Politicians, athletes, actors, musicians, entertainers and members of royalty belong to the former. The latter are unremarkable citizens who become significant, because of their extraordinary experiences, for instance victims of crimes or tragedies, precisely as well as criminals.The amount of ordinary citizens who receive their credit status unwillingly is quite big and the privacy of those people needs to be especially abide by and maintained. Names, addresses or pictures that could lead to the identification of a somebody should never be made public. It is not of take for the readers, and it usually does not make a difference for them, what the name of some champion is, but for the one bear on publication of identity could mean embarrassment and harassment. Suspected criminals, for instance, could lose their jobs, their families could break up or their in all lives could get destroyed, even when the y are innocent. Apart from that, as soon as someone is well known, they are pursued and harassed by journalists demanding interviews. Also in cases where a family secure had to experience the loss of a dear somebody, the press usually shows little respect for that.While we tend to despise the way the press is treating ordinary people and feel the beneficialification for their right to privacy, we have problems applying the same to people who were seeking a public role. In those cases we tend to think we have a right to the invasion of their privacy, since they have ordinate themselves into the public philia on purpose. We demand to know about their individual(prenominal) lives, but we dont see that this interest is only greediness for amusement.The press is using this human phenomenon and is sacrificing individual privacy for the entertainment of a general public to increase the circulation of a paper. We are satisfying our voyeurism and we even claim that we have a right to it , but by that we submit ourselves to the tabloid values of a mainstream media and put that under the cover of public interest.What is public interest? Journalists usually widen this term to use it as an rationalize for all forms of reporting, in order to cover up every detail of ones life. But public interest is not necessarily what the public is interested in, which is usually arouse and crime it is not what increases the circulation of a paper it is not gossip. Public interest is the necessity to have access to essential reading that allows us to keep a critical eye on our society. A psyches personal lives or gossip about it is not news and not of public interest. But unfortunately, reports about politicians sex lives are more popular than reports about someones policies and public actions.The position of politicians in the eye of the public is especially difficult to judge. On the one hand politicians use their happy family and home in campaigns, on the other hand we know pe rsonal particulars and behaviour have nothing to do with competence in running a country and private details, even if completely irrelevant, can still die careers. Sometimes only due to the intrusion of privacy, corruption or similar crimes can be made public, but at the same time not everything in ones life is attached to ones office.When personal morality and family values are deliberately used by politiciansas a reason for them to be elected, they have chosen to make it a public issue or else than a private one. This is a sad fact, but it does not justify intrusion of the personal lives of all politicians. A politician still is, like everyone else, entitled to privacy.Unfortunately, the press and the public calculate to have self-aggrandising bored covering politicians who arent celebrities and so personal gossip wins over public issues. Since their private lives are so closely observed, politicians are concentrating a lot on their image and consequently they have slight t ime to spend on their actual job. This close scrutiny is not only humiliating, it also makes suffering political performances more likely. If the public lost its big interest in private lives, political coverage and also politicians themselves would have to focus more on policies and actions. Everyone would have to stop making privacy an issue, which has no place in politics.However, competence seems to count less and less nowadays and politicians are rather hypothetical to have a good character. People are inclined to think that one who betrays his wife also betrays his country, which generally not the case. But character is not determinable by personal behaviour and merely there is no connection between private morality and someones ability to do a job well. Would we rather have a morally integer, but less competent person in power? A lot of good leaders of the past would probable fail today, for example Kennedy, who committed adultery, or Kreisky, who had a speech impediment. Many talented people do not consider to reach a high position today, because they have no blameless personal lives and many are kept from seeking a public office, because they fear the intrusion of privacy.Politicians have to be observed in some respects. The press, being independent from any authorities, influences an important role in informing the public it is the doer that can expose corruption, wasting of taxes, hidden agendas or other crimes by examining actions and words of politicians. Naturally, there is no clear dividing line between public and private matter. Generally you can say, everything that has to do with the particular persons profession has a public interest justification and canthus be account about. Intrusion of privacy should only be allowed in cases where privacy is strongly connected to the public office. each other information revealed, which is irrelevant to the politicians skills and competence, is not irrelevant to the image one has of that person. It just prejudices people against them and this can clearly not be in the public interest. Watergate, for instance, was one example of a journalist revealing illegal political actions, but here only information connected with the persons profession was made public.Clintons sex-affair, however, was an example of going too far into privacy. People claimed the building block scandal was not about sex, but about committing perjury, which is not quite true. A perjury of Clinton about a land deal would have probable not interested as many, but this one was about sex, so the interest was enormous. Clinton was asked something he should have never been asked. Private questions such as make you ever committed adultery? ought definitely not be put to someone. Because if one refuses an answer to a query like that, it is a signal that there is something to hide. Since you hardly find someone who has never through anything wrong or illegal, it is especially unlikely to find a politician like that. Everyone knows they cant admit little sins of their youth or sex affairs, because they know it would ruin their careers. So politicians have dickens possibilities when they are asked questions about their private lives not answering, the same as admitting, or lying.For celebrities, other than politicians, it is even more difficult to argue for their right to privacy, since so many of them use their status of being popular and seem to enjoy sharing private details and creating sensational news to stay well known or to make money. Publicity should be expected by them and loss of privacy is said to be the prize for fame. But does every skier, musician or actor really just want to be in the public eye? Is not also imaginable that a tennis player just loves to play tennis and detests being on television?We can reduce those people to the fact that they are famous, but it would show little acknowledgement for their talents or abilities. After all, the celebrity status is in many ca ses just by-product of someones success in a particular field. Fame does not rob anyone theright to privacy and journalists go way too far for interviews or pictures of celebrities. Sometimes this has great consequence as in the case of Princess Diana, who died in a car accident after being chased by reporters.We are all obsessed with privacy, protecting our own on the one hand, and invading other peoples privacy on the other hand. If people similar to us, ordinary people, get their privacy invaded, we are outraged. But someone different to us, someone famous, somehow has the duty to uncover everything there is. Since they have voluntarily thrown themselves into the public light, they now belong to the public. Political scandals have shown the need for close observation of public figures, especially if they have power, but in most cases we hypocritically claim to have a right to know about something that is actually none of our business. Privacy is classed as a right under the Europ ean Convention of Human Rights and it applies to everyone.