Topics Ethics

Question Suppose some celebrity has made him or herself more loved and well-received partly by establishing an him or herself as faithful, compassionate husband or wife. If it’s later found out that this celebrity actually leads a messy private life far from the established image, does he or she owe an apology to the public? What if the celebrity never revealed anything about his or her private life or used it to establish some image? Does the public or the media have any right to expose, examine or criticize his or her private life? Some say it’s an inevitable price to pay for the publicity, since they also reaped benefit from it. Is it true?

Accepted:
October 15, 2020

Comments

In cases where the celebrity

In cases where the celebrity has intentionally established a false perception that was consciously used to leverage considerable benefits, especially financial benefits, the celebrity owes an apology, at least, to the public (perhaps also resigning from a position, perhaps returning goods). There's a kind of fraud in that. But the responsibility is limited for two reasons: (1) most people commonly try to present themselves in an optimal way and (2) everyone understands that. The point at which legitimate grooming shades into fraudulent deception can be difficult, but those with experienced judgment in the relevant contexts are best suited to draw the line. Neither the public nor the media have the right to examine anyone's private life, and that includes the private lives of celebrities. Except when special circumstances prohibit it (say teacher-student relationships), people do have a right to criticize others and even to expose others when the information about those matters exposed was obtained in permissible ways or when there's an overriding public interest in doing so. So, for example, if a journalists were to have invaded a celebrity's privacy inappropriately, discovering evidence of the celebrity's involvement in a plot to murder someone, the journalist would face a duty to inform the relevant authorities. Information about a child or spouse's drug addition or consensual sexual conduct or past peccadillos would, however, be off limits.