Billy Dukes provides the Counterpoint to an argument about a privacy issue I was not aware of:
The issue of whether or not media outlets should service the Randy Travis arrest video isn’t a legal one. It’s a moral issue that’s only attached to the now-Country Music Hall of Famer.
TV news, tabloid magazines and online blogs and news organizations will soon need to decide what to do with this video (be it redacted from the waist down or available in full-moon glory), or the next video. Legally, Travis might have an easier time challenging a law that says his video should be made public than he’s having convincing a judge his specific video should not be released because it violates his personal medical privacy, as Fox News reports. Remember that it would be another year before he’d suffer the stroke that left him partially paralyzed and unable to speak. At the time of this DWI arrest (August 2012), his life was a mess. The public release of his arrest video from six months earlier came without a fight — did the circumstances change that much? A federal court will untangle that legal question soon enough.
So okay, I need to back up and find out more, I guess. The Fox News report, linked to above, seems to have a decent recap of some of the chronology of the case. Based on their reporting, it seems like all the courts agreed that showing the arrest video, in which Travis was nude, was just fine under the law. No expectation of privacy in public?
But seriously, folks, how is this no more than prurient interest, schadenfreude, or any other petty rationale for embarrassing someone? Golden rule, anyone?
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