Privacy and sloppy journalism

August 19, 2010
stealthy

We are irked. Our ire rises, our teeth gnash, our loins are girded and our fists clenched. Why, oh why, does the media insist on peddling the line that judges are covertly creating a privacy law? Take this, from the Guardian, about Lib-Dem moves to introduce legislation on privacy:

The Tory-Lib Dem coalition government is considering a new privacy law rather than allowing judges to create one by stealth, the justice minister Lord McNally hinted last night.

This is a nonsense. Judges are no more creating a privacy law by stealth than David Cameron is seriously going to take up surfing on his holiday to Cornwall. What judges are guilty of – the fiends – is applying precedent to the facts before them and ruling accordingly. Latterly, m’learned friends have utilised case law which dates back decades to try to preserve the privacy of their clients, at the same time as society has become ever more intrusive and prurient. Thus a privacy law has developed, but only because existing law has been applied to a new factual nexus.

Judges are not creating a privacy law by stealth. It is high time the media got its facts right.

Pictured courtesy of futurelawyer: an off-duty judge, going about his evil business.

 

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From the inside of the maze, ethically outwards

February 9, 2012

Curious times in the media; strange days at The Times.

Would ‘Dacre Cards‘ – the system of licensing journalists proposed by Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre – have prevented the embarrassment now palpable at the Times over the NightJack story?

Times editor James Harding’s evidence to the Leveson Inquiry seemed heartfelt and contrite, albeit that the paper’s former long-serving and much-respected lawyer, Alastair Brett, seems to have been, er, rather dropped in it. Clearly, mistakes were made with regard to NightJack by young reporter Patrick Foster who, once he had hacked into NightJack’s account and thus discovered his identity, then embarked on a quest to expose it via legitimate methods. This, as Inquiry counsel Robert Jay QC put it, was “rather like working from the inside of the maze out”.

But had Foster been licensed via a Dacre Card, would this unsavoury episode in the Times’s history have been avoided?

We suspect not. A raft of laws were in existence at precisely the time when many News of the World journalists seemed to believe that they were entitled to hack any phone they liked. Those laws forbade them from doing so, and yet made no difference. Aside from the obvious objection to them – that they will squeeze out freelancers and citizen journalists – Dacre Cards would simply amount to something to circumvent.

What is really required is an ethical shake-up, from top to bottom. Society generally – not just journalists – needs a sense that some things are just plain wrong.

Supreme Court on Twitter

February 6, 2012

Something remarkable happened today. Yes, the Supreme Court launched its Twitter feed. It even has a Twitter policy, one of caveats, disclaimers and little by way of illumination but regardless: who would have thought that the successor body to the House of Lords would stoop to engage with the world of tweets, hashtags and retweets?

We look forward to the day when court business will be conducted via Twitter. Meantime, check out this link for an excellent blog on the Supreme Court.

Not so right said Fred

February 2, 2012
fred hat

So Farewell, then, Sir Fred Goodwin.

Now you are just Fred.

Not Right Said Fred, but plain Fred.

The Forfeiture Committee did for you.

No one had heard of it before,

But Dave said it had to act, and it did.

Trouble is that no one knows what to think.

Is it ‘Alas, poor Fred‘,

Or ‘Hurray! Sir Fred is dead!’?

We don’t know.

Do you?

By A. Mob, aged 1,378 and a half.