The latest “debate” about media and privacy, triggered by last week’s television expose of NSW transport minister David Campbell leaving a gay club, is a sham conducted by people who are paid extremely well to legitimise something nasty and indefensible.
The reasons presented with faux-respectability by tabloid journalists, editors and owners for breaching personal privacy (“it’s in the public interest” … “the public’s right to know” … “tell the truth and let the cards fall where they may”, etc) are no more a pretext for real motives they can never reveal in public — ratings, circulation, profits, generating publicity for your brand, career progression, beating the competition, pleasing the boss and boasting in the pub.
They know it and their colleagues know it. But they can never admit it in public and rarely even acknowledge it in private because even they understand it is often immoral behaviour, and who wants to admit to that, even in private? So it gets wrapped up and justified behind a serious-sounding façade that purports to be about “the right to know” but is really about commercial self-interest and having fun at someone else’s expense.
The editorial culture of the organisations that routinely invade personal privacy — tabloid TV, certain newspapers and weekly “women’s” magazines — is aggressively, deliberately and explicitly led from the top. It is a culture that is constructed, in part, to invade privacy. It is a practice that sits at the heart of their editorial DNA. It is one of the core tenets of the way they do their journalism, and the way their journalism is internally judged and rewarded.
There is only one clear and forcefully policed demarcation line in these organisations when it comes to even the mildest form of covering private lives, and that’s when it comes to the private lives of the family and close associates of the owners and senior management of the media organisation itself.
Invading and breaching privacy is a centrepiece of tabloid journalism that will continue to grow iteratively. Whatever they get away with today will be the starting point for what they can get away with tomorrow, unless stronger privacy legislation or regulation is introduced by governments to curb this behaviour.
The big dilemma with the argument for tougher measures — and it’s a dilemma that tabloid media exploits to the hilt — is that while there is a powerful argument to curb irresponsible abuse, there is also a powerful civil society argument to ensure that information that is truly in the public interest is not circumscribed by laws that have an entirely different intention.
Which is why the “right to know” practitioners run the line that it’s better to suffer some unfair invasion of personal privacy in order to protect publication of important information — laughing all the way to the bank and the pub as they say it.
Personally my opinionion is that as long as you don’t do it in the street & scare children & horses a person’s personal life is just that however in this case & I suspect other policiticians he didn’t want his preference known publicy
I understand that he was a police minister. Somebody with a secret can be vulnerable & thus the airing of the matter is in the Public interest
@Pav: The article (in the first paragraph) says he was transport minister, not police minister. Michael Daley seems to have been police minister since 14 sept 2009. So go on about these secrets being in the public interest?
Meski
Previously he had been Police Minister and anyway Iwould say that as Transport Minister he would certianly be in receipt of commercially sensetive information and decisions.
The fact he wanted to keep his orientation secret means he is vuklnerable then what if he promoted to Treasurer?
Now that it is in the open he should juct be judged on his capacity.
I think his premier makes a valid point that perhaps he had to live a lie becuaee of prevailing attitudes made it untenable for him to be open or at least that was his perception.
As much as I would never like to be considered as supporting thye sorry excuse that passes as commercial current affairs ( at least it made a change from the latest fad diet or dodgy drycleaner) I don’t have a problem with the revelation
You see, Mr Beecher?
When you publish a story about the sham of a dubious “debate”, your readers respond by carrying on that “debate” underneath the story.
When the Sydney Morning Herald, the Australian, and Crikey, all print a story about the printing of a story — as in, “gosh, look how low the tabloids/commercial TV/shock-jock radio sank this time!” — the result is little different than if you had scooped the story yourself.
The way to win a moral victory over smut is to ignore it. That means being willing to lose some readers who will put down your paper and pick up the racier one. But for each reader you lose, there just might be a lapsed former subscriber you regain.
It’s great that this story has been turned around, but now, let’s start drawing rings around some other examples as opposed to wringing out every last drop this one. The opportunistic attitude of the “respectable” media to jump on what now appears to be a bandwagon to scrutinise Channel 7, is just as ratings driven as the original story!
The most valid part of this arguement, which should be explored is this passage: “that’s when it comes to the private lives of the family and close associates of the owners and senior management of the media organisation itself.” — This kind of hypocracy drives me mental.