Staff Editorial: Has the public eye become too sharp?

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Ordinary citizens like you and I don’t have the right to peer into the private lives of others in hope of satisfying curiosity. Celebrities deserve as much privacy as everybody else. However, people tend to pry into their business and scrutinize the smallest of details in the daily events of their lives.

As of Nov. 27, professional golfer Tiger Woods has been examined closely by the public eye, due to adultery brought to light by his car accident. Woods had minor injuries from the crash, but some falsely believe that his wife, Elin Nordegren, beat him because Woods supposedly had flings with other women.

Whether or not he had affairs should not matter. Rather, the fact that Woods did not seriously injure himself should carry more weight.

Respectable news sources such as ABC and NBC presented accounts about the car crash, but most of the sources mentioned and focused on Woods’ alleged affairs. These news sources obtained information from tabloids such as TMZ. Rather than doing ethical reporting, these journalists opted to use unreliable sources to present gossip, not news.

There is a line that separates news and gossip. The point of news is to inform people about recent important events, whereas gossip involves trivial things that often involve personal matters. Unfortunately, some Americans go for infotainment and gossip instead of news.

We must admit that we have all been guilty of engaging in gossip: either spreading it or asking about it. It’s merely human nature to be curious. But we need to make an effort to fight against the magnetism of rumors before it hurts someone.

Unless a background check is necessary for a job or other similar cases, people should not care about the private matters of another individual. Just as celebrities, public figures or any other individuals, we would not want people to dig their noses into our personal matters. So we should all back off, set down those tabloids and let people live their private lives.

Illustration by Brian Jeon