Dissertation – 2011 and The Collapse of Media Ethics: Public Shaming and The Boundaries of Disclosure

Since the downfall of the Press Council and its replacement with the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in 1991, there has been an increasing tension between journalists and public figures over the disclosure of their private information. Public shaming in this form has become an emerging tradition in the media, as the definition of privacy has become an ever-shifting notion in our increasingly invasive popular media culture with the likes of reality TV shows and social media. With the introduction of the Human Rights Act (HRA) in 2000 as well, public figures are now able to go straight to court on privacy matters, which has ‘encouraged a new wave of challenges to the media on privacy issues in the UK courts’ (Tambini and Heyward 2002: 4).