Of Tabloids and Utilitarianism
I’ve always had a morbid fascination with supermarket tabloids. It never fails to impress me that people can make a living based on publishing almost1 entirely fictional stories about sordid and debauched behavior by celebrities.
I am, of course, referring to the actions of American tabloids. Because English libel and defamation laws are so broad and wide-ranging, it is impossible for English tabloids to publish the standard “Justin Bieber Caught in Hotel Tryst with Orca” sort of spiel. This has an unfortunate side effect – rather than concocting fictions about celebrities, English tabloids dig into the lives of ordinary people, extracting, twisting, and putting on display the most unfortunate and horrifying incidents – rapes, murders, pedophilia, you name it. I feel that it’s this desire for provably-true gossip that has engendered the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World, which yesterday defied all our expectations and grew even more lurid thanks to revelations that former PM Gordon Brown’s phone was hacked in order to reveal his infant son’s medical issues.
The contrast between the effects of British and American tabloids presents an interesting ethical dilemma. American tabloids are concerned almost exclusively with celebrities, and any sensible person knows to disregard the overwhelming majority of what tabloids print. It is unfortunate that celebrities must endure a bevy of falsehoods about them under the American system, but contrasted with the English system a much smaller number of people suffer. From a utilitarian point of view, America’s weaker libel laws – though they fail to stop the publishing of untruths – end up minimizing unhappiness: after all, tabloids don’t need to hack people’s phones if they can just make shit up.
It’s worth reflecting on the way that laws restricting free speech, even when enacted in the best of faith and with the best of intentions, can end up exerting a demonstrably negative effect on society.
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I say “almost” because on a few occasions tabloids have published factual articles, such as when the National Enquirer broke the story of Rush Limbaugh’s prescription drug addiction. ↩
