Protecting Politicians’ Privacy for the Sake of Democracy

Abstract

When discussing the ethics of journalism and the ethical issues relating to privacy in particular, it is usually taken for granted that there is a significant difference between the privacy of the general public and the privacy of politicians. There are sensible reasons for making this distinction. We need politicians to be more accountable than other citizens, and it is one of the raisons d’etre of journalists to expose corruption and hold politicians to account. Authors may disagree about the extent to which politicians should be required to give up the privacy that the rest of us enjoy, but there seems to be agreement at the most basic level.