Variable standard on "zone of privacy"

When is it legitimate to publish stories about extra-marital sex?

2015-07-21-WP-gawker-grantland-and-when-our-personal-lives-go-public

Gawker, Grantland and when our personal lives go public
By Alyssa Rosenberg
Washington Post

Gawker, a publication designed to make waves, found itself swamped by something more akin to a tsunami last week after publishing a story about David Geithner, an executive at Condé Nast and the brother of former Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner. The piece, sourced by a sex worker David Geithner had hired, chronicled how a hired tryst turned into something uglier when the man Geithner had hired tried to get him to use his brother’s influence to resolve a housing dispute and then threatened to blackmail him. Gawker’s piece was outrageous because it helped fulfill that attempt at extortion. But it also revived an ongoing, and unresolved, debate about when it counts as news that someone is gay, lesbian, bisexual or transgender — and even when it is, whether it’s worth it to publish.

[That's not the whole reason, or perhaps the real reason,
to publish that story.]

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