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Wednesday 11 March 2009

AS General Studies B - Unit 1 conflict


Beliefs and Values


'Our obsession with the private lives of public figures proves the poverty of our own lives.' Discuss.


You might consider:


  • whether the media are only giving the public what it wants

  • the benefits to the public figures themselves of 'exposure'

  • the ethics of media intrusion into private lives


11 comments:

Anonymous said...

'Our obsession with the private lives of public figures proves the poverty of our own lives.' Discuss.

You might consider:

whether the media are only giving the public what it wants

the benefits to the public figures themselves of 'exposure'

proves the poverty of our own lives - it does prove the poverty as it shows we read the news to make us feel better about ourselves and that we have nothing better to do.


GEORGINA GOLDSBROUGH

Anonymous said...

more publicity = more money
we are fuelling the rich and famous by taking an interest. Therefore increasing the gap of between the public and celebs.
It does not show poverty but instead the divide between public and celebs.
Lauren Fawthrop 12EJ

Sam Whiteoak 12 SD (superman) said...

the real question that should be asked is whether there is even such thing as a private life. with the culture we have today where people are constantly monitored by CCTV should the term privacy be used with so much weight. people are publicly humiliated on national terlevision and stories are published in gossip magazines involving the general public. this means that people are constantly monitered and all sorts of people's lives are displayed publicly.

Anonymous said...

Yes it does, as we are usually angered by how wealthy and famous they are but at the same time we want to have what they have. So we are hypocritical about it.

Jessica Iveson 12 RAS said...

There is an apparent lack of ethics displayed by the media when they publish intrusive stories.
Most of the stories published invade the private sphere of family life. Many of the stories include information about young members of family that should probably be kept immune from the power and the scrutiny of the modern day media.

Hemash Mahmood said...

It is a violation of peoples privicy and they have a right to have some freedom and not have the media exposing their private lives.

Humzy

Kamran said...

Newspaperrs have been around for a very long time and it is how the news was delivered to people along with word of mouth, therefore it would be difficult to do without newspaper as they are seen to be less bias and deliver more relevant news however this is dependant on the type of newspaper. An example is The Sun which has turned into more of a gossip magazine.

Anonymous said...

Within the public demand is high for 'gossip' on the celebrities they idolise. Celebrity magasines sell in huge quantitites and this intrusion will remain.

LW

Anonymous said...

Media and technology has developed vastly over the years. In the last few years television programmes such as Big Brother have been introduced saturating the market, the popularity for such programmes has led to an increase in the knowing of peoples' private lives.

Sandeep said...

The media are influencing what the public want to read about through publishing articles on issues which are relevant to the public, such as losing weight, which makes the public more and more obessesive about it.

For example, front pages of magazines are constantly revealing the latest diets straight from the celebrity eye, which intrigues people who are wanting to lose weight themselves. People are actually wanting to lose weight in the first place because of an idealised image of the 'perfect woman' for example, which is portrayed constantly in the media.

Anonymous said...

- The media are giving the public exactly what they want. People will always want to know about the lives of famous celebrities, as they can escape from their own lives for a short while.

- The public figures that are exposed could benefit from this or they could not. For example, a celeb could gain even more fame from this exposure, or they could become sick of being spied upon, every day of the week.

- I believe it is wrong for the media to intrude into the celebrities private lives, however, being a celebrity, you must expect to deal with the press/papparazzi. Because celebrities are famous, this is exactly why they will always draw attention to themselves.