Privacy law recommended
The Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee has suggested the creation of a formal privacy law to tackle unwarranted press intrusion.
Such a new law is one of a series of measures proposed to try to safeguard the private lives of celebrities and politicians as well as protecting members of the public that the press involve in stories.
The Government previously signed the European Convention on Human Rights into UK law, and although it protects privacy, there is ambiguity as to what this represents. Several high profile cases have tested this ambiguity, and rulings have been diverse.
The chair of the committee, Gerald Kaufman explained: ‘If there were not a properly enacted privacy law with full safeguards, including public interest defence, then the human rights bill would create a de facto privacy law, not decided and debated by Parliament, but decided by judges ad hoc’.
‘We didn’t believe that was an appropriate way for a privacy law, piling up bit by bit with no consistency’.
Media figures have come out against the proposals, arguing that it would only be applicable to wealthy people, as normal people could not afford to take appropriate action, and that it would make it hard to report news.
The Government have quickly acted to reassure the media, claiming that a privacy law in not on the table, and restating the view that self-regulation is the most effective option.
However, some situations have highlighted the weakness of the unregulated nature of press intrusion, such as the publishing of topless pictures of Radio One DJ Sara Cox, for which she recently won damages in court.
Other measures proposed by the Committee include offering journalists the right to turn down assignments that they feel breach the code, and forcing editors to stand down from Press Complaints Boards for constant breaches.
If recommendations are accepted then the public may also see a change to the front page of national newspapers. The Committee has suggested that papers forced to print a ruling against it should be required to advertise it on the front page.
For his part, the chair of the Press Complaints Commission, Sir Christopher Meyer, has warned that a privacy law could remove the right of ordinary people to go to the PCC for redress against errant newspapers, leaving them with no alternative but expensive and intractable legal remedies,
‘It is extremely difficult to come up with a privacy law that in the end would deliver a better outcome for the thousands of people who come to the Press Complaints Commission for redress’, he insisted.
Sir Christopher also took issue with the argument that the Sara Cox case, and similar instances where celebrities have gone to the courts to seek redress against wayward newspapers, had ‘opened the flood gates’.
‘We have had a handful of cases tested under the Human Rights Act, while we the PCC have been processing hundreds if not thousands of complaints to the satisfaction of the vast majority of our clients’.
