Chapter 8
Privacy and Public Life
Fill-in-the-Blank Questions
1. Search engines and other websites use _____________, or small files that work with
your Web browser, to track who you are and where you’ve been online.
2. Philosophers and others say _________ exist between our public and private lives.
Answers to fill-in-the-blank questions
1. It is almost always illegal for news organizations to report the names of juvenile
suspects.
2. Ancient Greeks noted that there should be a distinction made between a person’s
public life (“polis”) and private roles.
3. The U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights includes a specific right of privacy.
4. The internet has made it easier than ever to protect information that you don’t want
to become public.
5. Privacy issues are limited to our rights “to be left alone.”
6. Most media organizations see privacy as a “prima facie” value that should be
considered against competing values.
Answers to true/false questions
1. The key ethical issue involving privacy and public life is the ___________ _______
involving privacy and the good that can come from others having information.
A. ethical issue
B. balancing act
C. categorical imperative
D. legal requirements
E. theoretical implications
2. Ethical issues involving privacy occur in mass media that include:
A. news organizations.
B. online sites, such as social media.
C. advertising and marketing.
D. entertainment programming.
E. all of the above.
3. Which of these is NOT a definition of privacy?
A. The right “to be left alone.”
B. The right to have “personal space.”
C. The extent to which a person has “social and legal space to develop the emotional,
cognitive, spiritual, and moral powers of an autonomous agent.”
D. The right to “not have others talk about you without your permission.”
E. The right to “to control dissemination of information about himself.”
4. This future Supreme Court justice, along with Samuel Warren, wrote an influential
1890 article in the Harvard Law Review that called for a constitutional amendment for a
right to privacy.
A. Hugo Black
B. Louis Brandeis
C. Oliver Wendell Holmes
D. John Jay
E. Thurgood Marshall
5. In journalism, the key ethical struggle is between invading privacy and:
A. causing harm to the person/group whose privacy you have invaded.
B. the public’s need to know intimate details.
C. laws involving privacy.
D. knowing that if you don’t report it, someone else will.
E. losing advertisers.
Answers to multiple choice questions
1. Discuss at least five other values that sometimes come into conflict with privacy.
Provide an example of each.
2. Describe the relationship between privacy and moral development, as suggested by
Ferdinand Schoeman: “When privacy embraces some aspects of autonomy, it is defined
as control over the intimacies of personal identity. At the broadest end of the spectrum,
privacy is thought to be the measure of the extent to which an individual is afforded the
social and legal space to develop the emotional, cognitive, spiritual, and moral powers
of an autonomous agent.”