“It’s the entitlement that really gets me. The feeling that someone else’s life, their mistakes, their trauma, their STORY is just free for the taking because it was in the news,”
This. So. Much.
Entitlement is the perfect word for it. In all the sensationalism of modern news reporting, we are guilty of conflating news and entertainment. We forget that there are actual human beings at the center of these stories, people who deserve to be able to decide whether or not their stories get exploited to further enrich someone else.