Privacy and the Press
SIR,—May I be allowed to answer the letters of your correspondents Mr. W. L. Andrews and Mr. H. A. Taylor ? My article on privacy and the Press was not intended as an attack on journalists at large, for I am not one of those " odd folk to whom the word Press seems to mean no more than the newspaper they mo,st dislike." Nor did I advocate, as both your correspondents suggest, that a remedy should be given to all persons whose privacy has been infringed by the Press. The creation of a new civil wrong consisting of invasion of privacy would present great difficulties in legal definition and would be of doubtful benefit to the public. I agree with Mr. Tay:or that the institution of an effective system of internal discipline by the Press would be a satisfactory, and perhaps the only, method of dealing with the majority of cases where the privacy of an individual has been unjustifiably invaded by journalists. My omission of a sentence from the report of Lord Porter's Committee was prompted solely by a desire to save space and by no such disingenuous motive as Mr. Taylor suggests. This sentence does not in the least conflict with the case which I seek to make.
Neither of your correspondents appears to have appreciated the all-important distinction which I intended to draw between newspaper reports which are merely an offensive presentation of true facts and those containing statements of fact which are known by their writers to be untrue. Only in the case of the latter did I suggest that a legal remedy should be given to the victim. " To protect the privacy of all citizens when their deeds are in question is to endanger the people," says Mr. Andrews. "In any sphere of human activity in which freedom may be said to exist, there must be legislative gaps," says Mr. Taylor. I would not suggest that newspapers which publish inaccurate statements of fact about private citizens inadvertently or even negligently should incur legal liability. But is it really in the interests of the public that they should be free in so many cases to publish statements in the full knowledge that they are untrue and with complete impunity ?
If the societies of the Press can succeed in framing a system of internal discipline so as to make statutory intervention superfluous so much the better. This particular abuse however could be remedied by legal innovation. While the years go by and, to the outward observer, little progress appears to be made in the negotiations for the establishment of a Press Council, one wonders how much longer
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