The Comment Factory

Max Mosley, compared his media treatment to being burgled

In the age of the rampant, voracious global media machine, privacy is a dirty word. Showing the deepest despair of the suffering (or the most intimate moments of the happy) is not considered voyeuristic but part of society’s rights. Google Street view is merely a reflection of the anti-privacy zeitgeist. The right to understand more deeply the complex emotions of people we will never meet, to be able discuss and stand in judgment on issues that might be best left well alone.

In any case privacy has evaporated. The result is a world where we probably know less than ever, despite the glut of information out there. Not in the technical sense but in the emotional one. The over-preponderance of all sorts of opinion-based tidbits on everyone from Madonna to the unfortunate postie who finds himself on the front page of a national for being in the wrong place at the wrong time has left a yawning gap in our ability to discern facts.

We think we can judge people from a few press cuttings and forget the obvious, that it’s (frustratingly), never so simple.

Max Mosley not only had the media barge into his personal life, enduring the taunts and mockery of worldwide press outlets, but was treated as though his background and demeanor made him fair game for any sort of vilification. Quite frankly, I could have lived without knowing the details of what Mosley does in private. The News of the World would have sold fewer copies that week though. Mosley himself likened the experience to having someone break into his house and rifle through all his possessions, not a bad analogy. As a public figure however, should he have expected such interest and intrusion as par for the course? Some things are definitely in the public interest, like Michael Phelps and marijuana. Who defines the public interest is another matter and the lines will always be blurred.

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The recurrent allegation is that stars make a great fuss about their desire for privacy while secretly thriving on the flaunting of their private lives. Diana was accused of this, as are many celebrities who complain of paparazzi intrusion. It is possible to want it both ways though: coverage when things are going well and to be left alone when it gets too much.

The social world has always thrived on variations of who’s who, idle gossip by people who usually have no idea what their target is really feeling or doing and speculation about personal motivations.

In different countries the outlook on what constitutes just speculation and harmless gossip and what is invasive takes on different hues. After Heath Ledger’s death last year, the gathering crowds of photographers around the apartment where he succumbed to accidental overdose were considered by many in Britain to be ravenous crows, totally money-driven and without any respect for the young man involved.

Birth and death have already come close to becoming commodities: see the stunningly tasteless OK! Jade tribute edition, out on the shelves before her death. The Jade phenomenon may have helped highlight the issue of cervical cancer and the importance of early smear tests but it seems sad that she had to live out her final days in such a glare of publicity, even if it was by choice. I still can’t decide if this makes us more sensitive and caring as a society or is a sign that we have become blasé and desensitized.

Leading on from this is the danger the democracy itself is subverted by a confused outlook on the limits of privacy. Politicians are ever more reliant on press and PR and it is often difficult to gauge what their real character is and if they genuinely have the moral strength to at least fight for what they believe once in office, even if they cannot achieve it. And people are ever more distanced from politicians and the political process. If there is not a proper grassroots part to politics, it risks alienating voters to the extent that they will vote for (sometimes extreme) parties that they feel operate within their communities and not on an elitist, national and international level only. This is true of Britain as it is of other nations. You just have to look at how the presidential candidates in the US had to tirelessly tour “the shires” in order to make headway — it is not considered good enough in the United States to just sit in Washington and talk the talk. They elect their sheriffs as well, which seems to me the best possible way of not ending up with government lackeys in vital roles. Power to the people and all that.

In Britain not only do we not elect our police or for that matter anyone aside from a few MPs and MEPs (even then it’s by party list so dubious in terms of direct election) but we seem to accept the status quo of most things being decided from above. Except the X-Factor, which to be fair is an important national institution. Perhaps the nation is satisfied with this but we have never really tried the alternative. And this week, in the midst of the economy sliding around in a puddle at the bottom of a 700 foot ditch, we learn that all flights out of the country are to be monitored and plans “approved” at least one day in advance of travel. This in itself would not be so bad if the plans did not also include travelers to be obliged to give their itinerary. Again, even the itinerary — giving is not necessarily a problem, but if anyone is up to no good, they are hardly going to write in detail their plan to go abroad to commit criminal or other abhorrent acts — so it is unclear what purpose such a database will serve, apart from to pigeonhole the Brits even more.

This mass simplification of personality and motivation is perhaps unavoidable in the webbed and maze-like society in which we manoeuvre. Just because we accept it does not mean we should not have our eyes open more widely to the fallacies that can spout from this.

All that is certain is that the ever-continuing battle between conscience (God, if you like) and money is brought starkly to light in the dilemmas of the technological and media ages. Even if it is invented money.