What do the photos we take say about us Research Paper

What do the photos we take say about us - Research Paper Example Publication of Prince Harry’s nude photos irrefutably constitutes privacy violation, as can be discerned from the definition of private facts under privacy law. Private facts are information snippets about an individual’s personal life, which have not been previously disclosed to mainstream public and do not bear any justifiable public concern. Publication or disclosure of these private facts is also deemed offensive to reasonable persons in society (Nordhaus, 1999). Clearly, the Prince’s naked photos meet all these criteria. First, intimate photographs of Prince Harry are not ordinarily available to the public. Secondly, the photos are not of any legitimate concern to the public, since the information does not bear any relevance to critical societal matters. Most importantly, any reasonable person would consider the naked photographs offensive. This is because nudity often typifies indecency, which goes against the conventional principles of morality, especially in conservative environments. In addition to the high level of offensiveness and lack of newsworthiness in Prince Harry’s personal photos, diverse media outlets that published the photos did not acquire consent from the subject. This is a vital element when publishing private photographs. The act of publication, therefore, constituted unlawful use of private photographs and was decidedly unfair (Berkman Center for Internet and Society, 2008). Failure to obtain consent also points to the fact that, the respective media outlets solely focused on sensationalizing the photographs and gaining popularity ratings (Jobson, 2012), as opposed to portraying the Prince as a dignified public figure. The publication was, in consequence, morally wrong and disregarded journalistic ethics of responsible and unprejudiced reporting. The unreasonable nature of the act is aggravated even further, by the fact that the subject was photographed in a private