It is believed that personal information of politicians should not be revealed to print media. This essay strongly agrees with the statement above and supports the practice of confidentiality of people’s private details. Publication of such details can be very harmful to not only politicians but their families as well. Moreover, obtaining this data often involves breaking the law and trespassing.
First and foremost, what makes this information harmful is that it could lead to unwanted comments and allegations towards the politician, which bring on a great deal of distress for them. Furthermore, the unwanted attention can pass on to friends and family of these individuals and negatively affect them. For instance, a minister of the Siberian government was falsely accused of theft due to misinformation spread by the local print media as an attempt for publicity. This accusation caused a lot of problems for the minister’s family as well.
Secondly, obtaining this data in the first place violates the right to privacy of the victim as this is done without their consent. In most countries, the right to privacy is protected by the law and can be a punishable offense. Most of the time, confidential facts about the lives of politicians are gained by intruding into private properties and bribing the residents and workers present there to expose private information. For example, a group of paparazzi were once caught sneaking into the residence of a government official and attempting to capture photos of his bedroom. When confronted, they revealed that a newspaper publisher had hired them to leak sensitive information of the official.
To conclude, I wholeheartedly support the suggestion that politicians’ personal information should be kept private as they are people too with a family who have a right to privacy, and an intrusion of this right means breaking the law and should be punished accordingly.