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Published on 09/07/1998 All articles from this issue

Determining the right to privacy

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By David L. Grey

Media Watch

Privacy. This is a precious word and concept for all of us. But some have more of it than others or are entitled to more than others.

The president or CEO of a Silicon Valley corporation living in Los Altos or Los Altos Hills can expect mostly to be left alone. The president of the United States living and working in and out of the White House mostly cannot.

A major decider in how much right to privacy one may have is "newsworthiness," usually through state laws and courts.

Also, have you consented or agreed to give up certain privacy assumptions by the nature of your job, status, behavior?

Thus, the executive of a privately owned company who typically shuns public spotlights likely will have many more protections than the executive of a large, publicly-owned company who also voluntarily serves on various boards of directors or is otherwise influential in national to local community activities.

Entertainers, athletes and other high-profile celebrities are usually closer to politicians in having less privacy protections than average and even not-so-average private citizens.

Of course everyone has - or should have - guarantees against most intrusions and trespassing on personal property, spying and eavesdropping, blatantly false/misleading public portrayals and a variety of other complex legal and ethical invasion-of-privacy principles.

Why only "should have"? Again, the crucial factor often is that omnipresent newsworthiness. You can be even a private person and lose a lot of privacy because you have - even involuntarily - been thrown into the public arena, such as being a victim of or the close relative of a victim in a major tragedy.

By contrast, winning the lottery may be an act of fate, too, but remember, you consented to play. And the lucky do become news and fair game for public rights to know.

Such may seem unfair at times, but our democratic society is based on balancing openness with closedness and the scales typically tilt toward the former.

"No matter how it's packaged and delivered, news has always fulfilled mankind's most basic need to know ... Democracy's survival depends upon that need to know and the free flow of ideas and information."

These words from President Clinton, April 17, 1997, have turned dramatically ironic by recent developments and especially during four-plus television minutes a month ago when he insisted on presidential privacy.

This column seeks to concentrate only on the privacy issue. So whatever sides taken so far in our national angst at local press time, we sense one lesson painfully clear: It is very difficult to argue recent invasions of privacy in the White House on nearly all legal, philosophical, logical and moral grounds.

And there is a revitalized legacy for newsworthy leaders, celebrities, role models or others - whether in public or so-called private sectors, national or local. It is: one established test for openness is whether private matters influence or may influence the conduct of public business.