What Were You Thinking? A Survey of Journalists who were Sued for Invasion of Privacy

Forty-two journalists who had been sued for invasion of privacy were asked to reconstruct the thought processes that led to the publication (or broadcast) that brought the lawsuit. Findings indicate that the journalists were generally unaware of impending legal trouble; that they perceived these situations as fundamentally ethical to a slightly greater degree than they perceived them as legal; and that legal reasoning seems to take place in a “total context” of social factors. The study raises further questions about the relationship between ethical and legal consciousness in journalists' everyday decision-making.