Abstract: Journalists believe that the public’s right to know and need to shine a light on vice and corruption supercede all other considerations. But often the light they shine does not focus on vice or corruption, but on private people whose lives have been changed by a ‘newsworthy’ event and who find themselves put in a public spotlight by the news media, or on people in public life whose private lives are deemed to have a (negative) effect on their ability to do their jobs.