The Media Is Poisoning Our Privacy
All journalists should have an understanding of the law and how it affects their work. Journalists face a difficult balancing act where they must respect people’s privacy while still being vigorous and tough.
There are many sections of the law that a journalist should recognise, including; privacy, contempt, defamation and copyright.
Warren and Brandeis defined invasion of privacy as,
“an intentional physical, electronic or mechanical invasion of a person’s privacy. Privacy covers anything that an individual might reasonably expect to keep from becoming public knowledge”.
This area of law has been developed significantly following numerous scandals, regarding the breach of privacy, including; the 2011 phone hacking scandal, in which it was discovered that the News of the World had hacked into the voicemail's of thousands of people, from celebrities to victims of crime, which later led to the closure of that newspaper.
The Phone Hacking Scandal
After the 2006/7, when Clive Goodman, the then News of the world royal editor, was sentenced to four months in jail after pleading guilty to intercepting phone messages.
Then in September 2010, a string of well-known people took legal action to have their claims looked at again, after suspicions arose that phone hacking had been used nationwide.
It finally came to an end in 2011 when the News International announced that Sunday, 10 July 2011, was the last issue of the News of the World.
Since that scandal, there has been numerous cases where companies have been accused of violating user privacy including companies, such as; Google and Facebook.
“If concerns about users’ privacy means slowly down our growth then screw privacy” — Facebook
After reading large amounts on Privacy in the law, when regarding public privacy, journalist do not seem to have an consideration for people when trying to find the ins and out of a news story.
There is a constant battle between journalists pushing their limits and the public sharing what they want. However, because of the growth in social media including Twitter and Facebook individuals are posting more and more on their online accounts which is open to the whole world, unless they change the privacy settings. This means that anyone, even journalist can now read the information that the public post.
A Recent Scandal
This includes the recent twitter scandal regarding I’m a Celebrity Get Me Out of Here, when Jack Maynard was removed from the Jungle when inappropriate tweets submerged which Jack had written when he was 15.
Having said this, due to the increase of journalist invading public privacy, and Newspapers breaching the act of privacy, their has been a change in law regarding Privacy.
How has the law changed?
Thanks to the phone hacking scandal, and other acts of miss conducted from tabloids regarding privacy, important changes in the way the press are regulated has occurred, and therefore the latest version of the Editors’ Code of Practice came into effect on 1 January 2016,
i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital communications.
ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any individual’s private life without consent. Account will be taken of the complainant’s own public disclosures of information.
iii) It is unacceptable to photograph individuals, without their consent, in public or private places where there is a reasonable expectation of privacy.
Social media user Lorelie Stone said:
“With the increase of digital technology and with social media constantly advancing, does anyone have any privacy anymore?” — Lorelie Stone.
