Practical Transparency: How Journalists Should Handle Digital Shaming and 'The Streisand Effect'

Abstract

What has become known in Internet culture as the “Streisand Effect” occurs when a person seeks to minimize the harm of something posted online through censorious legal threats, which then backfire, leading to even more scrutiny and attention for the harmful post. Such situations raise legal concerns and ethical obligations for journalists when they encounter people seeking to minimize online embarrassment and exposure, in particular when the people seeking privacy inflame their situation, inadvertently or otherwise, by making legal threats. After examining the narrow legal options available through gag orders and privacy torts, the authors propose the ethical concept of “practical transparency,” on a spectrum of access that spans the chasm of the philosophical extremes of radical transparency to total obscurity, as a balance test, taking into account the value of embarrassing or damaging information to citizens against the harm that disclosure of that information could pose to the embarrassed or shamed person or persons who face the vitriolic naming, blaming, shaming culture of the Internet. As a balance test, practical transparency offers a workable ethical standard for journalists covering cases of censorship backfire that span legal boundaries.

Keywords: Streisand Effect, digital shaming, censorship, ethics