Privacy, Press Freedom and Self Regulation

Privacy and press freedom are mutually antagonistic goals, and indeed it would be bad for society if either were absolute. Press freedom is necessary to uncover corruption, hypocrisy and other issues which affect the rest of Society. Privacy is necessary to allow everyone to be able to do as they wish in the comfort of their own homes where that doesn't impact on others.

This discussion has of course been prompted by the naked pictures of Prince Harry, who has been doing what any number of youngsters get up to at one time or another. As such pictures of such incidents regularly arrive on the internet to embarrass participants and they duly did for the Prince. But normally that it is where it would end: they wouldn't wind up in the press.

So should the Prince expect privacy in this case? In the internet sense, probably not. He did after all invite strangers with cameras back to his room: it's unlikely even for the general public that such things would remain just in the room. So how about press privacy. Here I think the answer should be that he should expect privacy. His actions were in a private hotel room with other consensual adults, nor were they illegal. The press, especially The Sun, is making a big issue of public interest, but it is hard to see any interest, above the merely gossip based, in a group of people, of whatever station in life, stripping off in private. I can only see a public interest where a person involved publically espouses a completely different behaviour, espcially where other political or finiancial interests may be tied in. Prince Harry to my knowledge has never made any such statements.

There are two clear motivations for The Sun in publishing the pictures, and neither involve the public interest. As the paper itself says, they are easily available on the internet: they claim this as no reason to prevent publication. In as far as it goes, that is probably true, but only if one takes the argument in isolation. The same fact of wide internet access could easily be used the other way, that as they are openly accessible anyway, what possible reason is there to bother republishing them again, especially in a paper which likes to take the moral high ground (regardless of what it actually publishes elsewhere in its pages).

The first obvious motivation is financial. The pictures will almost certainly lead to high sales, and at the end of the day the paper is a business. Unfortunately this kind of story plugs right in to what appears to be the evolved need for humans to keep track of the social hierarchy in their group so financially they are probably on to a winner.

The second motivations seems to be to thumb their noses at press self-regulation. As other papers have stated these pictures would appear to violate the code of conduct for the press, and which is self regulated. It would appear that some people associated with The Sun think that they should have a near absolute right to publish whatever they wish because they are "the press" and are using this as a cause celebre with the Press Complaints Commission and the Leveson Inquiry in their sights. More expert opinion than my own would appear to indicate, that regardless of what you may think of the current rules, The Sun has without a doubt broken them. So now it comes down to how they will be punished, if at all. Which brings us to self regulation.

The Leveson Inquiry has shown that the press is as corruptible as any other institution and needs checks and balances. However, for such balances to be effective it is clear that they must be independent: self regulation continually fails. It may well be that all The Sun achieves is to demonstrate how toothless self regulation is and prompt the one thing I doubt it actually wants, which is a legally independent oversight of the UK press.