Transparency... to a whole new level!

This article on Yahoo News talks about Venezuela's Hugo Chavez spying on his political rivals, taping their phone conversations, and then using them in television commercials in an attempt to discredit them. HOLY CRAP! is probably our first reaction... and yet how different is this really for the transparency laws that I talked about in my last blog post? If one argues that a person's private life becomes open to the public when they put themselves in a place of public status, is this really that much different? If a President has to worry about sending e-mails because of transparency laws making his private correspondences public, how are his phone conversations any different? And if they are public couldn't they be used against him? We look upon what Chavez is doing and we think it's pretty ridiculous, but it's not too far off from what's already being done. It seems that anybody is willing to spy on someone else for "juicy gossip," without much moral consideration. Sure some journalists may take ethical considerations and refuse a story, but there are plenty out there who don't and will put it on the air. It seems more and more likely people are interested in airing out each others dirty laundry, the concept of privacy seems to be disappearing all together... Privacy isn't just turning on my privacy settings on facebook, in fact technology has enabled this sort of mass form of global gossip.

This might be a good place for me to say "So watch what you put online," but in all reality anyone can post anything about anybody. It's a weird and scary world we live in, and will we see more people using Chavez's mud slinging methods? This last Presidential election was pretty brutal, will it only get worse from here?

Transparency

In a recent article on BBC News it seems like Barack Obama may "quit" using e-mails... Due to transparency laws, his private e-mails could be subject to the public eye. I had never thought of it being an issue for the president to use a cell phone or it being a problem for him to use e-mail. Is it really ethical that just because he's the President that his e-mails would be open to the public? I'm not sure I agree with this, although many would agree that when your place yourself in a position of public interest like an actor or politician, all aspects of your life are public too. We've used Jenifer Aniston’s boobs several times in class, and Sarah Palin's family as an example several times in class, and even though I can recognize those who agree that their private lives aren't private, I don't agree. Sure some may do it for attention, and really sort of want people hounding them, I feel as though everyone is entitled to their right to privacy regardless of their "Job." Hypothetically speaking if I were to become famous doing what I do, I wouldn't want my private life to become open to the public. Sure it could be argued that if that were to happen, it'd be my own fault of placing myself there, but there's a difference between wanting to succeed and do some great things, and wanting to be featured in tabloids in supermarkets around the US.

Do people really have the “right” to know what e-mails the president is sending? Do people really have a right to know the contents of an e-mail that anyone sends? I could see for security reasons why Obama would have to refrain from using his blackberry, but other than that he shouldn't have to worry about sending an e-mail...

Facebook-Stalking

While reading the chapter named "Deception" in Ron Smith's "Ethics in Journalism," for a little while I was actually agreeing with the use of some deception by journalists for the sake of the story. It didn't strike me as horribly wrong for a reporter to get the "inside scoop" of a prison, but essentially lieing about his identity to the warden and others shouldn't be an issue unless you've got something to hide? I know that's pretty harsh, and the reality comes in when you consider the fact that the reporter has really stopped being a reporter, instead they've become a spy... worse yet this spy reports their findings to the world, essentially airing any dirty laundry they may have found. This sort of covert reporting is taken to a whole new level when TV News casters plant hidden cameras in an effort to get the story. Who hasn't seen or watched a commercial for an undercover news story, one that really rings out to me was one that I watched about news reporters who actually were tracking down sexual predators using the Internet and them luring them in for an interview. Is that wrong or is that a public service?

What scares are reports that I've found on reporters using social tools like Facebook in an attempt to get the "inside scoop." More specifically I found two articles where a New York Times reporter has used facebook in a malicious manor, both here and here. This is creepy and P. J. Gladnick is write when he (I'm assuming it's a he) describes this as sleazy tactics. Its pretty obvious to everyone now that we have to be careful about what we put on our facebook pages, and be sure to set it up so you aren't really visible to the world because what facebook does is enable people to stalk other people. We sort of joke about facebook stalking each other, but it's not so funny when not only do people have to be worried about legitimate predators but also news reporters ready and able to share information about you to the world... if it gets them the story. I guess I shouldn't be surprised that reporters are using facebook as a means to reaching out for more sources to a news story, and when someone may complain of an invasion of privacy, one has to ask the question... can anything you post online be considered private?