New privacy bill

[nixmix]

Anyone else concerned about this new legislation?

An opinion piece in the The Irish Times yesterday put the wind up me!

From Irish Times
'they will render unlawful a wide variety of normal and generally acceptable means of gathering news; they will render unlawful the publication of a wide variety of material whose publication to date has been thought to be for the public good; and, they will expand the range of injunctions and court cases that can be fought in camera, before and after publication.

Whereas the law of defamation punishes a newspaper post-publication, the new privacy law will be used to prevent publication. Privacy is not defined, thereby enabling a pre-emptive strike to stop the publication of anything displeasing to a wealthy and influential individual. Privacy will be the new gagging writ but the story will be censored in camera in closed courts and cannot be reported.'

And from Todays Irish Examiner:
Privacy laws - Bill framed to protect the powerful
ANY lingering doubts about the draconian nature of Ireland’s proposed new privacy laws have been scotched as media groups from 20 European countries oppose Justice Minister Michael McDowell’s repressive legislation.
And:
THE Government’s planned new privacy laws were criticised yesterday by press councils across Europe which claimed the strict rules would undermine self-regulation of newspapers.
In an unusual step, media groups from 20 countries joined forces in claiming the proposed legislation would deny the press the opportunity to promote high journalistic standards.
The Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe insisted that giving a press council statutory recognition was unusual.

Looks like the days of investigative journalism are about to be snuffed out. One can only assume that the politicians pushing this have a few skeletons in the closet, lol.

[michael1965]

Afaik. The bill has a specific defence of bona fide news gathering, which does mean that newspapers will be forced to defend their actions, but that is not the same as saying these activities will be illegal. That's my reading, but Im not a lawyer.

I wonder also how will yesterday's "Tiger Woods: Porn pictures" incident affect this debate. It's certainly just the kind of disgraceful privacy invasion that I think this bill aims to stamp out.

[ibis]

I have been told (by a lawyer, and recently) that it's a quid-pro-quo for the new libel law.

Currently, almost any investigative journalism runs the risk, if it publishes names, of being sued for defamation. The result is that very little investigative journalism gets published except after the event, and what is published is skewed by the need to avoid libel. Journalistic standards of proof are not sufficient to stand up in court.

Veronica Guerin made a point of referring to criminals by their aliases, so that the criminal would have to prove that they were "The Monk" or whoever before taking a case. She also relied fairly heavily on getting quotes directly from the people she was investigating, so that she could claim merely to be reporting, rather than making a claim herself.

If there is sufficient cover for investigative journalism in the new privacy laws, it should make the process of publishing investigative journalism rather less haphazard. I'm not sure how the IT thinks that a piece they have put together can be suppressed pre-publication under the new legislation.

Having said that, most journalists just seem to repackage the press release anyway - I don't see how that would be impacted by either piece of legislation.