do. That is the underlining factor of the two. Publishing private and true embarrassing facts may hurt someone severely, but journalists feel that it is a right for a person in the audience to know the truth. Ethically, the journalist must give the facts. Journalistic ethics understands that the worst possible thing is to give false information.Not only is it ethically wrong, but also, through the law, libel is a bigger problem. In actuality most initial invasion of privacy suits, especially in "false light" are changed to libel suits because they are more damaging. Libel suits are very expensive, upwards to a half a million dollars just for the cost to defend against a suit. Then, there is the cost of damages, which can as well be close to a million dollars.Finally once a libel suit has been made the journalist and the medium he or she works for can face many non-financial ramifications. Understanding the above statements of the fact that the integrity of the story and the truth of it is most important, the journalist, and the medium may have more long term damages to there career. If reporting the truth is the most important and the reporter unveils false information, what can happen? The journalist and the media may get a bad reputation themselves and they may ruin there credibility. Once credibility of a press outlet is lost it is tough to gain it back from the audience. Who wants to read or listen to a broadcast that doesn't tell the truth? Most importantly libel has a much more long-term effect on both the media and the person who the false information was about.I wanted to save an example for the end, and the best one I can think of is this. Most true information about someone, someone else knows about, and therefore other people will soon learn. I pose this question. What would be worse? Digging up information and finding that the new mailman is really a rapist that the police have direct records of, or falsely accusing the new...
