TMZ has broken three big news stories in the past ten months. I have to admit that I watch the show when I’m at the gym. They’re not stupid.
I watched the elevator footage of Ray Rice and his wife several times. I also watched the press conferences and interviews, and I come out of all it feeling very sorry for Janay Rice. Of course, I feel bad that she took a blow to the face. I can’t unsee that video, even though I would very much like to erase it from my brain. I also feel sorry for her, because she has to relive the whole thing over and over. There’s something exploitive about the whole thing. Like naked pictures on the iCloud, it exposes her and her mistakes (she married the dude) to the world.
She wrote this on Instagram,
“I woke up this morning feeling like I had a horrible nightmare, feeling like I’m mourning the death of my closest friend,” Janay Rice wrote. “But to have to accept the fact that it’s reality is a nightmare in itself. No one knows the pain that [the] media & unwanted options from the public has caused my family. To make us relive a moment in our lives that we regret every day is a horrible thing. To take something away from the man I love that he has worked his ass [off] for all his life just to gain ratings is horrific.
“THIS IS OUR LIFE! What don’t you all get. If your intentions were to hurt us, embarrass us, make us feel alone, take all happiness away, you’ve succeeded on so many levels. Just know we will continue to grow & show the world what real love is! Ravensnation we love you!”
While I think TMZ is basically harmless and fun when covering the silliness of celebrities that put themselves in the limelight, I do feel that we’ve entered into dangerous territory. The wife of a football player needs some protection, not just from the press, but the public.
Apt. 11d 
Do you? I’m not so sure. I think she needs protection from her husband (and perhaps from herself). Not that I don’t feel for her. I do.
If you marry someone famous, you have to know that anything he does that is illegal or controversial may very well make news.
LikeLike
I don’t watch these things. I can’t. I worry about the prurient interest (and, in the case of the nude pictures of celebrities, I think there’s a right answer — we really shouldn’t look. There is no public interest served by looking at pictures that weren’t meant to be public and violate even a celebrities privacy).
But, in the case of a husband beating his wife (Rice), teens assaulting a classmate (the boy with autism who was assaulted by the disgusting version of the ice water challenge), the photos from Ferguson, war photos from Gaza or Syria, . . . I think the ugliness of the images doesn’t preclude the informational importance of the images. I still can’t view them, but I think they can’t be hidden. There’s no doubt that there’s shame in being the victim of domestic abuse, of rape, of bullying/assault. But I really do think the culture of secrecy surrounding that right to privacy allows the abuse to continue and that protecting privacy at all costs has lead to more abuse.
So, I think Janay Rice’s privacy rights were violated, and yet, I think we couldn’t avoid it. There’s also a controversy over the parent’s release of the video of their autistic son being assaulted, but there too, I think the shame surrounding his victimization has to be fought, rather than hidden.
I protect myself by not watching, and I also think we need to discuss more openly when we think these videos can be used and where they shouldn’t. California has passed laws on privacy rights in hospitals, fairly strong ones, because of violations of celebrities right to privacy. I think we need similar laws for privacy in other private places. I don’t think elevators qualify, but there will be other places where images will be collected in ways that will make people uncomfortable and right now, we’re in gray areas of rules about how these images will be shared.
LikeLike