public eye

1. (with, definite article) The focus of public attention; the limelight.
   • 1892, Mark Twain [pseudonym; Samuel Langhorne Clemens], chapter X, in The American Claimant, New York, N.Y.: Charles L[uther] Webster & Co., →OCLC ↗, page 97 ↗:

     The chief function of an English journal is that of all other journals the world over: it must keep the public eye fixed admiringly upon certain things, and keep it diligently diverted from certain others.

   • 1909, P. G. Wodehouse, chapter 10, in The Swoop! or How Clarence Saved England:

     [T]here had been the heavy work of seeing the interviewers, signing autograph-books, sitting to photographers, writing testimonials for patent medicines, and the thousand and one other tasks, burdensome but unavoidable, of the man who is in the public eye.

• German: Öffentlichkeit