The media today, and especially the national press, are frequently in conflict with people in the public eye, particularly politicians and celebrities, over the disclosure of private information and behaviour. Historically, journalists have argued that 'naming and shaming' serious wrong-doing and behaviour on the part of public officials is justified as being in the public interest. However, when the media spotlight is shone on perfetly legal personal behaviour, family issues and sexual orientation, and when, in particular this involves ordinary people, the question arises of whether such matters are really in the 'public interest' in any meaningful sense of the term. In this book, leading academics, commentators and journalists from a variety of different cultures consider the extent to which the media are entitled to reveal details of people's private lives, the laws and regulations which govern such relations, and whether these are still relevant in the age of social media.

Julian Petley, Professor of Journalism and Screen Media, School of Arts, Brunel University, London, England.

List of Contributors
Foreword, Hugh Tomlinson QC
Introduction, Julian Petley, Brunel University
To Punish, Inform and Criticize: The Goals of Naming and Shaming, Jacob Rowbottom
Public Interest or Public Shaming, Julian Petley
Privacy and the Freedom of the Press: A False Dichotomy, Simon Dawes
On Privacy: From Mill to Mosley, Julian Petley
Disclosure and Public Shaming in the Digital Age, Hanne Detel
Cultural and Gender Differences in Self-Disclosure on Social Networking Sites, Jingwei Wu
Crime News and Privacy: Comparing Crime Reporting in Sweden, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom, Romayne Smith Fullerton and Maggie Jones Patterson
The Dominique Strauss-Khan Scandal: Mediating Authenticity in Le Monde and the New York Times, Julia Lefkowitz, American University Paris
Public Interest and Individual Taste in Reporting an Irish Minister's Illness, Kevin Rafter
Visible 'Evidence' in TV News: Regulating Privacy and the Public Interest, Tim Dwyer
John Leslie: The Naming and Shaming of an Innocent Man, Adrian Quinn
The Two Cultures, John Lloyd
Index