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5 U. Balt. J. Media L. & Ethics 4 (2016)
Practical Transparency: How Journalists Should Approach Digital Shaming and the Streisand Effect

handle is hein.journals/ubjmleth5 and id is 103 raw text is: PRACTICAL TRANSPARENCY: How JOURNALISTS SHOULD APPROACH DIGITAL SHAMING AND THE STREISAND EFFECT DAXTON R. CHIP STEWART* KRISTIE BUNTON** What has become known in Internet culture as the Streisand Effect occurs when a person seeks to minimize the harm of something posted online through censorious legal threats, which then backfire, leading to even more scrutiny and attention for the harmful post. Such situations raise legal concerns and ethical obligations for journalists when they encounter people seeking to minimize online embarrassment and exposure, in particular when the people seeking privacy inflame their situation, inadvertently or otherwise, by making legal threats. After examining the narrow legal options available through gag orders and privacy torts, the authors propose the ethical concept of practical transparency, on a spectrum of access that spans the chasm of the philosophical extremes of radical transparency to total obscurity, as a balance test, taking into account the value of embarrassing or damaging information to citizens against the harm that disclosure of that information could pose to the embarrassed or shamed person or persons who face the vitriolic naming, blaming, shaming culture of the Internet. As a balance test, practical transparency offers a workable ethical standard for journalists covering cases of censorship backfire that span legal boundaries. Keywords: Streisand Effect, shaming, transparency, censorship, obscurity I. Introduction Jeff Jarvis, a City University of New York journalism professor regarded as a media thought leader, has been a prolific critic of a wide variety of institutions and people online, and a vocal opponent of censorship. So when Jarvis sought to censor a long-time critic for writing a parody column in Esquire using the name @ProfJeffJarvis, he must have expected the backlash typical of the Internet. I have put up with this for four years now, knowing that if and when I complain - cue Streisand - I'll only bring more s*** upon my head, Jarvis wrote on his blog.1 Jarvis was referring to the phenomenon that bears entertainer Barbra Streisand's name, the Streisand Effect. The effect emerged more than a decade earlier, when aerial photos of Streisand's home that were posted online went viral after she unsuccessfully sued to have them removed. The Streisand Effect is the notion that the more you try to get something off the Internet, the more you fuel everyone's interest in it, thus defeating the purpose of your original intervention.2 'Jeff Jarvis, Enough (2016), https://medium.com/redefining-rude/enough-569bae96773e#. z42qpircj. 2EVGENYMOROZOV, THE NET DELUSION 120 (2011). UB Journal of Media Law & Ethics, Vol. 5 No. 3/4 (Summer Fall 2o16) Page 4

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