Protecting Britain’s press freedoms

[Commentary] Britain’s tradition of raucous press freedom is much vaunted, and for good reason. It makes newspapers willing to criticize government and to expose wrongdoing by public figures. It is an effective check on untrammeled power. But this same freedom can have a darker side when it involves editors peddling prurient gossip about people’s private lives.

Such stories, while undoubtedly intriguing to readers, are not always defensibly in the public interest. Separating the wheat from the chaff is a task that judges increasingly take on their shoulders following the UK’s adoption of a legal right to privacy. This system, which has seen the courts stepping in with increasing frequency to gag the press, is unsatisfactory. Privacy, which is displacing libel as the recourse of choice for those who do not want the media to report on their activities, is a concept far more threatening to press freedom than defamation. It holds that some things should not be published simply because they are private. Its development has been driven by a series of court rulings based on Article 8 of the European Convention on Human Rights, which was originally designed to protect an individual’s private life from intrusion by government.