Cian recently pointed out that Irish bloggers have largely ducked or ignored the recently published Privacy Bill, which the Irish media is rabidly opposed to. In order to make some move towards correcting this and perhaps encouraging a wider debate amongst bloggers I will now give my personal thoughts on what I know about the bill.
Firstly, I believe the Bill is not without it’s merits; as with a Code of Conduct Irish newspapers have failed to establish basic rules of engagement and so deserve to be forced into a more respectful situation. There are numerous examples where normal people’s privacy is invaded for sensationalist stories; the same applies for celebrities or politicians. It is not news-worthy that a celebrity is topless on a beach or a famous musician’s daughter is sick, in fact it is no one’s business unless the person in question decides otherwise.
With that in mind I fail to see how the mandatory Press Council, stemming from the Defamation Bill, cannot cover this issue itself. The basis of the council will be a code of conduct; should a complaint be made about an article or publication which breaks this code the council can act and punish. This simple solution allows normal people to be vindicated and lazy and bad journalists to be reprimanded without the cost and time of a legal challenge.
I would be surprised if the Press Council does not include the issue of privacy in its code of conduct and I don’t see why it should be legislated any further; allowing people to make injunctions and set up private legal proceedings to thwart journalists is a dangerous game to play and one that will only favour those with big money.
Should a journalist find themselves in court, attempting to justify their investigations they would need to show that what they are investigating is news-worthy; whatever that means.
If I were to give a rule-of-thumb definition to the term “news-worthy” it would be this; any action, incident or event that can, will or has had a substantial or important impact on the lives of a/all member(s) of the wider public.
A celebrity without make-up has no impact on anyone’s life, the illness of a young girl will only have an impact on her family who already know the facts, and so wider publication is not justified. I’m sure any legal-eagle reading that sentence has already found its flaws, however I’m not claiming it to be rock-solid it is simply my opinion of what is news-worthy.
I agree with the NUJ’s request to hold back on the bill and allow the Press Council some time to ‘bed down’; if they fail to enforce fair privacy for the public after a year or two then I would gladly say the media has lost its chance yet again.
Finally, I would like to comment on Roy Greenslade’s post on the issue in which he highlights the problems the bill would pose for UK newspapers with Irish editions. Frankly if there is any real merit to this Bill it is here; the Government and the Justice Minister should not concern themselves with the potential effect on a UK newspaper and they should not step back because it would make things slightly more difficult for them due to differing legal situations; if anything I welcome any bill that would force UK companies to put more effort into their Irish editions although I wouldn’t welcome it enough to support this particular attempt. God forbid The Sun and Daily Mail would need to change more than the front page for their Oirish versions to claim it was an Irish edition.