Free Speech, Transparency, and Privacy
There is, unfortunately, a conflict between, on the one hand, the need to ensure that the press is free to investigate issues of legitimate public concern, and that the courts operate in a sufficiently open environment to maximise the chance that they will deliver justice, and on the other hand, the natural wish of every human being for some degree of privacy in his or her personal life.
This conflict is always particularly difficult where there are children involved. The Times newspaper has been running a campaign in which they have argued that the secrecy of Britain's family courts, imposed to protect children, may in some cases have been actively counterproductive since that secrecy has allowed a number of what appear to have been outrageously unjust decisions to escape proper scrutiny. Yet nobody would want the children involved exposed to the full glare of press attention. Maybe the traditional British solution of printing the decisions but witholding details which would allow individuals to be identified and denoting people by letters (e.g. "Mr X" and "Mrs Y" would be an improvement.
For fear of stifling legitimate press investigation, the British parliament has never deliberately passed a privacy law, although it is coming to appear that Labour may have unwittingly saddled us with European privacy laws through the Human Rights act. Following a spate of ugly press intrusions into people's private lives, David Mellor once warned the media that they were drinking in the last chance saloon. I remember hearing at the time an excellent speech in response to this, I think it was by Eric Pickles, which concluded with the words
"If the press is drinking in the last chance saloon, a wise government will think long and hard before calling 'Time'."
There are no easy answers to the conflict between free speech and privacy. It can often be the case that the victims of wrongdoing, or others who have done nothing wrong but who unwillingly find themselves the target of massive public curiosity, are just as desperate for the press to "go away and mind their own business" as are those who have actually done something wrong. Often the majority of journalists will respect that wish. On other occasions there are too many who do not. And sometimes justified press reporting can add to the pain of the innocent. I saw this for myself many years ago.
Until my early twenties I had assumed that the expression "He aged five years in a week" was just a figure of speech. Then I saw it happen, twice in a year, to one of the nicest men I ever met. The first time was when he was one of the victims of a terrible crime. The second time legitimate press reporting probably contributed to what happened.
Some 25 years ago, a kind, gentle, friendly man with whom I used to sing in a church choir came home from work and discovered his wife's murdered body. I was horrified at the change in his appearance when I next saw him: luckily someone quietly took me aside and explained what had happened.
The killer, and the woman who had hired him, were brought to justice, and sadly the surviving victim's pain was not over: in order to explain the motive for the crime the prosecution was forced to demonstrate to the jury that the person who paid for the murder did so because of jealousy of another man with whom the murdered woman was involved. That process would have been painful enough if it had been conducted in private: needless to say every single national newpaper, broadsheet or tabloid, carried page after page of lurid detail after each day of the trial.
The victim's husband - or rather, the victim - couldn't face coming to church for several weeks afterward, but when I next saw him he looked to have aged another five years during the trial. I will always remember another member of the congregation saying some supportive things to him, and she concluded with the words "And everyone I know thinks the way the press behaved was disgusting." At the time, so did I.
And yet: what else could have been done? This was a murder trial. At the end of it, the people in the dock were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. What sort of society can allow people to be tried in secret for crimes like murder, or to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the evidence to justify that sentence being presented in public?
The answer to that question, sadly, is a society which is willing to risk the possibility of grave injustice being done in secret.
We need a free press. We need open courts. And we need to find a way to keep those things which also protects family life. To find a balance which achieves all these things will not necessarily be easy, but it has to be done.
This conflict is always particularly difficult where there are children involved. The Times newspaper has been running a campaign in which they have argued that the secrecy of Britain's family courts, imposed to protect children, may in some cases have been actively counterproductive since that secrecy has allowed a number of what appear to have been outrageously unjust decisions to escape proper scrutiny. Yet nobody would want the children involved exposed to the full glare of press attention. Maybe the traditional British solution of printing the decisions but witholding details which would allow individuals to be identified and denoting people by letters (e.g. "Mr X" and "Mrs Y" would be an improvement.
For fear of stifling legitimate press investigation, the British parliament has never deliberately passed a privacy law, although it is coming to appear that Labour may have unwittingly saddled us with European privacy laws through the Human Rights act. Following a spate of ugly press intrusions into people's private lives, David Mellor once warned the media that they were drinking in the last chance saloon. I remember hearing at the time an excellent speech in response to this, I think it was by Eric Pickles, which concluded with the words
"If the press is drinking in the last chance saloon, a wise government will think long and hard before calling 'Time'."
There are no easy answers to the conflict between free speech and privacy. It can often be the case that the victims of wrongdoing, or others who have done nothing wrong but who unwillingly find themselves the target of massive public curiosity, are just as desperate for the press to "go away and mind their own business" as are those who have actually done something wrong. Often the majority of journalists will respect that wish. On other occasions there are too many who do not. And sometimes justified press reporting can add to the pain of the innocent. I saw this for myself many years ago.
Until my early twenties I had assumed that the expression "He aged five years in a week" was just a figure of speech. Then I saw it happen, twice in a year, to one of the nicest men I ever met. The first time was when he was one of the victims of a terrible crime. The second time legitimate press reporting probably contributed to what happened.
Some 25 years ago, a kind, gentle, friendly man with whom I used to sing in a church choir came home from work and discovered his wife's murdered body. I was horrified at the change in his appearance when I next saw him: luckily someone quietly took me aside and explained what had happened.
The killer, and the woman who had hired him, were brought to justice, and sadly the surviving victim's pain was not over: in order to explain the motive for the crime the prosecution was forced to demonstrate to the jury that the person who paid for the murder did so because of jealousy of another man with whom the murdered woman was involved. That process would have been painful enough if it had been conducted in private: needless to say every single national newpaper, broadsheet or tabloid, carried page after page of lurid detail after each day of the trial.
The victim's husband - or rather, the victim - couldn't face coming to church for several weeks afterward, but when I next saw him he looked to have aged another five years during the trial. I will always remember another member of the congregation saying some supportive things to him, and she concluded with the words "And everyone I know thinks the way the press behaved was disgusting." At the time, so did I.
And yet: what else could have been done? This was a murder trial. At the end of it, the people in the dock were convicted and sentenced to life imprisonment. What sort of society can allow people to be tried in secret for crimes like murder, or to be sentenced to life imprisonment without the evidence to justify that sentence being presented in public?
The answer to that question, sadly, is a society which is willing to risk the possibility of grave injustice being done in secret.
We need a free press. We need open courts. And we need to find a way to keep those things which also protects family life. To find a balance which achieves all these things will not necessarily be easy, but it has to be done.
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