1. Can celebrities expect privacy? I believe that a celebrity should be allowed expect privacy in
their lives depending on how the deal with attention from the media and general public. If a
celebrity keeps their life mostly out of the media’s spotlight I believe that their privacy
should be respected and that they should be left alone by the media. One of the reasons I
think this is because some celebrities like to stay private to protect their families from
unwanted attention such as the paparazzi. However if a celebrity stays in the lime light given
from the media and if they use that attention to further their own career’s, I believe they
should expect people to breech their privacy as they are open about their lives anyway. I
also feel they should expect bad press as well as good if something from private lives is
drawn to the attention of the public.
A news story about a celebrity phone hackings would be broadcasted on channels such as
MTV and radio stations such as BBC 1. These example stations have target audiences who
would be interested in the celebrity phone hackings; this makes the news story a high
priority for these stations to broadcast. The phone hacking scandal is a feature story so it
would be displayed nationally to maximise the audience and alert the public more to this
information. If anybody of a different nationality had been involved in this story it would
have been internationally broadcasted. As the celebrity phone hacking story was slowly
being released to the public, the media was interviewing the public finding out people’s
thoughts and views on the event. This is because its human interest to gossip and argue
opinion’s which is entertaining. These interviews could be seen as follow up stories as they
can create two sides to a story and link it to the main event. For example, one side could be
a celebrity talking about how their privacy was breached, while the other side is from the
public talking about how they have the right to know more about celebrities. The reporter
would use quotes gathered from the interviews to use as content in their shows, however
they could use the full interview if they have footage to accompany it (this only applies to
news television shows).
The other story I have been assigned to look into is the “BBC liberal bias” this is about when
the former BBC news director Helen Boaden admitted that the corporation held a deep
liberal bias in its coverage of immigration when she took up the role back in 2004. This story
was broadcasted nationally as a large percentage of the UK would have wanted to know this
information. This story would take priority over most other stories on stations such as BBC 1
and BBC 4 as stories about politics are higher public demand. News reporters would try to
link this story to past events, to try and create a debate. This would create more interest I
the story therefore informing more people about the event, this can also be seen as human
interest. The reporter would use clips from interviews to accompany the story, on the
television the whole interview would be used because they have footage to piece together
with it. This would be the availability of audio that can be used by all broadcasters.
The public interest agenda ties into all the sections, if a story has a higher importance more
people will pay attention towards it. If public care for the story being told they will show

2. more interest and have more of an opinion towards the event. Most people, who were
interested in the celebrity phone hacking, would only pay attention if it was about
celebrity’s they care about. They would be less likely to pay attention if it was about
celebrity’s they have no interest in. With the second news story, the audience would be on
one of two sides either for or against the BBC. This allows for more of a debate to happen
between the public that would change over time depending on the outcome of the event.