A scene from “Tabloid”

McCoy: Of course, people should be protected against gross invasions of their privacy. There should be limits. But there must also be constraints on what a man can do when his privacy has been invaded. Even when his family's privacy has been invaded. Now, you may like Mr. Abbott and sympathize with him. And you may not like Mr. Marco. From what I know of Mr. Marco, I don't much like him, and I don't much like what he was going to do, but that cannot be a justification for what happened to him. We may not like tabloid journalism and the cult of celebrity that it feeds. The hunger for fame over virtue, for gossip over integrity. To us it may seem an unpleasant, miserable, disgusting game with which we would prefer to have nothing to do. But Mr. Abbott participated in it willingly. It was only when it turned against him that he took out his gun and shot Mr. Marco. We may not want a world in which celebrity and gossip are all mixed up with news. It's messy. But our society can survive the mess. What it cannot survive without is the free and easy exchange of information, all kinds of information, even if it's unpleasant. Even if it's irrelevant. Even if it's just gossip. We sort it out, and we blunder on, but we blunder on free. The only alternative is a world in which people (if they're smart enough, rich enough, powerful enough, likable enough) can stop the truth from being told. Warren Abbott shot Philip Marco to shut him up! With premeditation. In cold blood. Because he didn't like what Mr. Marco was going to write.