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>That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it. You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals,
by rndgermandude 6y ago
>That's the thing about free speech and press freedom, you are either for it or against it.
You can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation.
Germany and other does European nations for example have a stronger claim to personal privacy rights of individuals than the US, based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights. The European Court of Human Rights found that you cannot just publish any picture or piece of information you know but have to weigh the newsworthiness of information against the invasion of privacy such publication would mean.
E.g. paparazzos stalking somebody to a funeral of a family member is usually not newsworthy enough to overcome the personal right to privacy. Writing about somebody being gay would cross a line unless that somebody was/is publicly vocal about "gay matters" such as gay marriage legislation, gay adoption rights etc. Publishing pics of the family, especially kids, of famous people is usually a no go - except when those family members themselves engage in newsworthy activity such as coming a crime.
As it pertains to Gawker, they outed at least two high profile people as gay (Thiel, Cook), published a sex tape of Hulk Hogan and his partner, published nude paparazzo pics of various people including Justin Bieber and a slew of other things, while their sister site jezebel.com wrote pieces rather strongly condemning the publication of hacked nude pictures of Jennifer Lawrence and other in the "fappening". If only Gawker listened to Jezebel...
Frankly, I like the European way, which is certainly not free of dangers, a lot better than the US way. But famous people are people too, and are entitled to at least some privacy.
- DavidSJ 6y agoYou can have a balance of press freedom and privacy of individuals, and even the US does in libel and slander laws, as well as e.g. (more recently) revenge porn legislation. The issue here, though, is not whether Gawker's behavior should have been protected speech, but whether it's concerning for a documentary about Gawker to be canned by a studio controlled by a large company which had another aspect of its business harmed by the behavior of the subject of that documentary.
- adriancr 6y agoMedia should not be controlled by large entities but you can't say free speech for documentary producers but not for owners. Deciding not to continue the documentary is Apple's right to free speech. If anything you can push for legislators to apply anti monopoly laws to media and have companies split off.
- DavidSJ 6y agoApple has that right. But sometimes the way rights are exercised can still be concerning to others.
- rndgermandude 6y agoI agree. Short of regulating quasi-monopolies/antitrust and illegal content, media companies - regardless of their size - shouldn't be interfered with. If Apple pays to produce content, then Apple can decide to stop paying or shelf it (in accordance with any contracts they entered). To me, Apple's own streaming offering - which at least for now has sizable competition from giants such as Disney and Netflix and Amazon as well as small producers on youtube and elsewhere - is quite different from "social media" companies with their defacto "marketplaces of ideas" interfering with legal free speech of regular people, which I see with far more concern. It is also quite different to their quasi monopolist walled garden otherwise known as the App Store. Apple really is just a minor player in the TV space right now, and far more concerning is the Disney/Fox/Hulu behemoth, where we're slowly heading into antitrust territory.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]