Firstly, privacy is a fundamental right which all people can hold. With some exceptions, everyone has to right to privacy. The exceptions are when one’s private life is dangerous to others. Thus, there is a need to invade and pry into the person’s personal life. By opening up politician’s private life, it is an extreme form of invasion into their privacy which is tantamount to police carrying out an unwarranted search and seizure of someone’s home. Politicians similarly do deserve protection for their privacy. We should respect the confidentiality of public figures’ personal information such as their personal schedule and breakdown of their salary. In this way, we can prevent the threat posed to them if average citizens are too informed of their leader’s details. If a politician’s privacy is overexposed to the public, no one would want to be our leader.
Secondly, the extent of coverage on the scandals by the media has been rather excessive. The media loses their focus on their purpose and role as the reporting press to provide the masses with information on much more pertinent issues like the wars and environment. This phenomenon of the news media reporting about the personal decisions that they make has resulted in people being focused on the wrong topic. People tend to lose their concern of the policies implemented by the government and enquire more about the personal life of politicians. The private lives of politicians are not really much of a concern of the people and its does not affect their lives greatly. Moreover, the repeated coverage on the scandals of politicians would shift people’s focus from their political contributions and leadership prowess and undermine their professionalism to comment on their wrongdoings in life. The problem would be that the media should have a moral responsibility not to broadcast issues that shares some level of sensitivity. For example, the reports in 2008 of North Korean’s leader, Kim Jong-il’s poor health and imminent death, shows how the media created redundant rumours among the people and citizens became distressed, urging for more information to be disclosed about his health. Such confidential information of politician’s health should remain private and there is no need for open discussion since it only distracts us from the real work that our leaders do.
Lastly, the knowledge of a politician’s private life serves no purpose for politics. Essentially, our politicians are public figures and much of their private life is openly known. Thus, there seems unnecessary to waste our effort and time to pry into politician’s private life. Many people fear that if a politician is able to betray his wife, he would probably not have integrity in his duty to the country. For example, Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky’s scandal was exposed in a public investigation conducted and there was thus not much need to delve into the details of the affair. Our politician's private life is more important to some of us than the constitution that governs our lives. For some reason, we seem to pay more attention to the media when the issue that is being discussed involves a politician being caught having an affair than when it involves politics. Unless the private lives of politicians affect their ability to lead, the media should focus on the politics instead of the personal lives of politicians.
In conclusion, politicians own the right to privacy and they are after all humans who prefer to live simple lives like others. It is a great error to invade peoples' lives without their approval. The media should constantly engage in useful dialogue with politicians about the current problems and what future policies they would foresee. Enquiring about politician’s private lives are just of no use to the country. However, it is true that those who stand for public office and claim to be suitable to lead our country, should expect their private lives to be worthy of investigation and public debate. People would only trust in their leadership if politicians are honest about their personal life.
