Privacy in Ethics

This week in class we did much discussion on ethics and privacy. Our class was split up into several groups and assigned different case studies from Louis A. Day's book, Ethics in Media Communications. . We were to implement the SAD model in each case and explain to the the class our situation, our analysis and our decision.

My group in particular was assigned a case study about a high school senior named Laura Devlin who witnessed her brother's massacre of students and teachers at their high school. The brother was apprehended and their court-appointed attorney advised the sister and mother to speak to no one about the incident.

A newspaper journalist took interest in the story and through a personal relationship with an officer assigned to the case was able to access official evidence. Included in that evidence was the sister's personal diary filled with information about her own life, her family and offered very little to deal with her brother.

The journalist wanted to do a human interest piece based on information found in Devlin's personal diary. Her editor thought the story was on the line of unethical as it was an invasion of privacy. In my opinion, the editor was right. The journalist only acquired that information through a personal relationship and was never granted consent from Devlin's mother as she is a minor. It was also unethical because the information she wanted to include was not relevant to the incident of her brother. It just was exposing her personal business for the pleasure of the audience. In the public eye, it would have been interesting but the means by which she acquire the ends were unethical.