blogger/journalism-ish ethics & celebrity gossip Options

[brooklyneast05]

http://theybf.com/index.php/2009/11/05/exc...witcher=desktop

so i was reading this celebrity gossipy article about shaq cheating. usually i don't give a shit about these stories enough to read them, but i'm an nba fan so this one caught my eye. i think there's a lot of broader things we could discuss though here.

read the link to know what's going on.


there's a lot of discussion we could have about cheating standards and whether cheating men and cheating women are held to the same standards. we can go that way if you want, but i think this comment brings up a more interesting point that i wonder about

Clearly, I am in the minority. This kind of exposes don’t sit well with me. It is not our business, IMO! It is ok to report on seeing a celebrity at Starbucks or at an event. But this is not right, IMHO! What if it is not true? And if it is, this is messy to put this out there like that. And I am speaking for Shaunie, Gilbert and the children involved. Just messy. This is between the folks involved and not all the people that are now staring in. And spare me the myth that this comes with the territory.Anyhoo, that is what I think.

i feel a lot like this, and i'm wondering how many other people think this immediately when reading it and how many subscribe to the idea that it just goes with the territory of fame and we should all be used to it. when i read this initially all i could think is how did they get these emails and how is it ok to invade people's privacy this much? for me i feel like there is something really fundamentally wrong about these emails being posted up like this even though they are celebrities and are in the wrong for the cheating.

i don't know how they got the messages, but for the sake of the discussion let's assume someone hacked into one of their email accounts. the blog claims the emails were "given" to them. is it wrong for blogs to post this kinda stuff? should bloggers be concerned with some kind of integrity or ethics in situations like this? i mean they are most likely profiting from their site views. is it ok for your site to profit off information that was taken from hacking a celebs email account? i don't put it past some of these celebrity blogs to be the ones hacking into these celebs stuff for juice themselves either, and that goes to an even higher level.

i know there is a whole group of people who have no sympathy for celebs in any situation, especially when they were already in the wrong for cheating. are you someone who basically says if you don't want to get your cheating emails posted all over the internet then don't cheat?

[hypnotique]

Ive never been a fan of places quoting or posting up peoples private discussions via email regardless if they have been hacked or something.

Its one thing if its been made public due to being a politician and they were doing illegal things that it was ordered to be allowed to be posted publicly. But other then that thats bullshit, life isnt a free for all for people to exploit just because someone hacked and did the dirty work.

[mipadi]

I think it's almost more a question of relevance than ethics. In regards to famous people (celebrities, athletes, politicians, etc.), people seem to have a strong "holier than thou" perspective towards them. I think a lot of this is born out of jealousy: as much as we admire celebrities, we also loathe their fame, and love to being able to say "I'm better than <some famous person> because I don't <cheat on my significant other, etc.>." But is this really relevant? Does it matter? Occasionally it might in the case of politicians (there was one recent case in which a politician was having an affair with an underling's wife, and got that underling a lucrative position as a lobbyist in order to keep the affair quiet -- which is clearly a case of corruption), but as far as celebrities go, not really. There are much more important things to be reporting on.

[fameONE]

I'm often disgusted when I read about someone's personal life. Not because they may, or may not, have done something that the public deems immoral, but because their personal business is splattered all over the wall for everyone to see. You could argue that they're simply paying the price of being famous, but let's be real, regardless of what's going on in your life, would you want millions of people gossiping about it? Your ex-wife is screwing you for alimony, and some 16 year old girl on the opposite side of the world is blogging about it. It irks the shit out of me. Let people being exactly what they are; flawed. And let them live their goddamn lives.