The right to privacy: A legal guidepost to television programing

One of the most complex problem areas of broadcast programing is where a person's “right to privacy” meets the public's (or the broadcaster's) “right to know.” Guidelines through this area are difficult to find, resting as they do upon a highly technical body of law. Textbooks in broadcasting suggest the broadcaster use caution whenever the right to privacy might become an issue, but fail to give clear instruction (apart from the need to obtain a release in some unspecified form) on the best methods of avoiding a law suit. The average newsman and other program production personnel are ill‐equipped to analyze a difficult legal question without help and with little time. The following article, written for a graduate seminar at Michigan State University under the direction of Dr. Walter Emery, is designed to provide the non‐lawyer broadcaster with some guides for minimizing the influence of the “right to privacy” on the “right to know.”