The Privacy Debacle

Privacy is an important aspect of life that must be respected. It’s hard for many of us to imagine a life without privacy. If we want to get a glimpse of what having no privacy may be like, we can think what it may be like to live your life in a prison or under a totalitarian regime. Under these circumstances, one’s every move is watched and you cannot do much without somebody knowing. My textbook for my Media Ethics course states, “privacy is a shield against the power of the state and from others (Patterson & Wilkins, p. 125). Philosopher Louis Hodge wrote on the need for privacy stating, “without some degree of privacy, civilized life would be impossible” (Patterson & Wilkins, p. 125). In the United States, the Bill of Rights, were established to protect private life.

Megan Meier, committed suicide due to online harassment. Megan’s neighbors created a fake person, through Myspace, whom they used to harass her. The harassment eventually led to Megan hanging herself in her closet (Malone).

 

A reporter named Steve Pokin heard of the case and wrote about it, leaving out the names of the neighbors. This sparked outrage among many Americans. By keeping out the names of the neighbors, Pokin did what was morally and ethically correct as a journalist. The ethical thinking of privacy states, “privacy is considered a need, a way of protecting oneself against the actions of other people and institutions (Patterson & Wilkins, p. 125)” It is evident that people were outraged with Meir’s neighbors for their cyber bullying. Some people wanted Meir’s neighbors beaten and killed (Malone). For this reason Pokin had to keep their names a secret in order to protect them from society.  we cannot forget that there is a correct way to deal with situations with regards to respecting privacy and rules of civilization/community. There were also no charges filed against the neighbors, so putting their names in the paper could have been a lawsuit as it would be false information.

Eventually, the names of Meir’s neighbors were revealed by the St Louis post (Malone). By looking at the communitarianism ethical perspective, we may conclude that the post’s action to release Meir’s neighbor’s names was ethically justified. “Communitarianism thinking links privacy and community instead of seeing them as competing forces. A credible ethics or privacy needs to be rooted in the common good rather than individual rights (Patterson & Wilkins, p. 127)”. With that being said, maybe its better for the world to know the names of Meir’s neighbors as a safety precaution. This way people can be aware of who they are and what kind of act they are capable of. For e.g. people may be less likely to join their MySpace social link and people may remove themselves from their social link for their own protection.

Of the two perspectives stated above, I believe that the ethical thinking of privacy is more compelling. I say this because the ethical thinking states that privacy is a tool for protection that enables civilized life. Without privacy people of society may feel the need to take matters into their own hands. It was very likely that Meir’s neighbors, could have been attacked physically by angered citizens upon the releasing of their names publicly. In a civilized society, situations like this have to be dealt with in the right way or we can pave the way for some unwanted and undesirable behaviour.

I believe that social network sites like Facebook and MySpace should intervene in cases of cyber bullying but the question is how? They can’t really monitor everyone’s pages as there are just too many people to monitor and this would be considered an invasion of privacy. I do not think many Americans will be willing to give up their privacy or speech rights to social networking sites. Social networking sites are public domain and I think one way we can prevent cyber bullying is to be aware of it. If cruel nasty things are posted on one of these sites, then we as individuals should intervene.

Works Cited

Malone, R. (n.d.). Online Harassment- A hoax, a suicide — a journalistic dilemma. St. Louis Post Dispatch .

Patterson, P., & Wilkins, L. Media Ethics (Vol. 7). New York: McGraw Hill.