>>Your first paragraph implies that someone has to do something wrong before can before privacy can be breached.
>>That's just not the way I see it.

I disagreed with your use of "public interest" as a slogan that justifies publishing anything you please. IMHO that's a crock unless your target is doing something that impacts the public. Prurient interest doesn't cut it.

In this case, he wasn't standing for office or posturing falsely for public benefit or impacting the public in any way while he and his family privately grieved that he'd caught a (then) terminal disease through no fault of his own. What you call "public interest" was lip-smacking attention-seeking sensationalism behind a shield of sanctimony IMHO.

>>If something is true, the default assumption is that I'd publish it.

If an answer is that simplistic, the default assumption is that it's horribly misdirected IME.