Gossip Makes the World Go Around

I watched the movie ‘The Queen’ just the other day. It’s a movie about Queen Elizabeth, and the death of Lady Diana plays a major part in it. One of the first things that pop into my head when I’m thinking about the concept of ‘integrity’ today is therefore the personal life of celebrities. Diana was more closely watched than most celebrities, and definitely more than anyone in Sweden. Pictures and stories about her and many others with her have been in gossip magazines for ages now.

A while back a friend told me about a forum she reads every now and then, a gossip forum about Swedish celebrities. I got the link today so I had a look. Threads you can find there are ‘Who is the financier with the champagne?’ (debating what financier it is who bought a very, very expensive bottle of champagne according to an article in some newspaper), ‘Celebrities you have done drugs with’ and many other similar threads. There are also links to several gossip blogs.

So, what am I trying to say here? It’s basically the same argument that you’ve most likely heard before: is it right to gossip?

From an ethical point of view, you could argue that it is. The gossiper could claim to be a believer in hedonistic utilitarianism: the amount of happiness from the people who enjoy hearing the gossip will be larger than the amount of sadness from the person the gossip is about. Many other people would follow other ethical rules, for example saying that it’s not ok to encourage the paparazzi and that even celebrities need some space. Myself, I read the gossip pages in magazines at times, and I click on links every now and then to pages with gossip. But I can’t say I think that it’s the ‘right’ thing to do, and I beat myself up about it.

On a side note, what I also think is interesting in the case of that forum, is that the people being gossiped about would have a hard time suing someone for libel. First of all, it’s ‘just gossip’. But every now and then, a gossip magazine has to make apologies to celebrities for printing things about them that weren’t really true. On a forum such as this one, that’s still read by a considerable amount of people, it’s much harder to get that apology. There is a law, the ‘BBS law’ (1998:112), which could possibly be applied. It more or less states that the person in charge of an electronic bulletin is responsible for making sure that inappropriate material is removed. This is, however, something that’s first and foremost used in cases of forums distributing child pornography or copyrighted media, not libel. As a result, people can gossip on forums such as this one to their hearts’ content, and can be pretty liberal with the truth. The joys of modern technology.

Oh, and I’m not posting the link to that forum. That’s the least I can do to feel a bit more ethical about this!