Ethical? Murdoch paper hacks victim's Facebook site
mainReporting the death of four miners in a flooded pit on South Wales, The Times today published messages that had been posted on one of the victims’ Facebook page. Facebook is a semi-public site and its users are often concerned for their personal privacy.
Whether it is legal for a newspaper reporter to quote from a Facebook page has not been tested in the court of public opinion. I felt, on reading page five of The Times, that the dead man’s right to privacy had been invaded. Your view?
It depends if the page was private to start with, or did they get access to it through inappropriate means?
I think it’s not fair for papers to publish things like this, but if the page was public before the he died then I guess it’s information that’s freely accessible…..whether or not the paper *should* publish it is a seperate issue.
That’s a good example of the difference between been legal and been ethical. Maybe it’s legal, but it’s certainly not ethical.