Sample Essay:Lack Of Remedy For Cases Involving Violation Of Privacy In The UK

The number of court cases in the Britain involving violation of privacy and reputation has been exponentially increasing for the past twenty years. This has greatly drawn concern from both law makers and media regulators. Numerous bills have been drawn and there have been dozens of recommendations from media regulators, but one thing that has been difficult to achieve is a moderation of the two bodies in coming up with policies and bills that will ensure freedom of the press and at the same time ensure that the reputation and privacy of corporates and individuals are duly protected. For an individual privacy defines the ability of a person to express individuality, free from the constant and perusing eye of the public, it is not about committing crime or engaging in some illegal activity but a simple case of not washing one’s dirty linen in public. With limited knowledge the public can condemn and judge an individual based on the sometimes insufficient evidence therefore causing uncalled for shame and psychological trauma. This is the extent to which the press can use their mind blowing stories to damage an individual’s reputation and violate their rights to privacy. For a company’s the case is more or less the same because any company secret leaked out to the public can be used by competitors to defame the company or destroy the company. Not everybody who receives the information given by the press have good intentions, that is why more and more people and companies suing the press for leaking out some private or defaming information.

Regulatory bodies in the press have also attempted to come up with several changes in order to ensure the scrutiny the information spread by the press. The first attempt saw the establishment of the press council in 1953 but which was perceived by many as not being proactive in its actions due to the lack of power and mandate to execute its objective which was to censure unethical conduct by journalists. In 1989 a Bill which advocated for the setting up of a statutory body received so much support and it prompted the government to establish a committee to look into privacy and related matters. The committee strongly recommended the statutory body whose mandate would be to receive complaints related to privacy violation by the press. The press however did not like the idea of a statutory body and retaliated by setting up a parallel body to avoid this direction. The press later rejected the statutory way of regulation and the establishment of a new tort to address violation of privacy. The silent wars between the government and the press did not stop here and are as fierce as ever.

It is apparent that the press has also tried to establish regulatory bodies, but it has dire limitations that seem to promote privacy violation rather than prevent. For instance the Press Complaint Commission (PCC) is funded mostly by the print media that it is supposed to check. It operates by including people outside the press industry with the aim of providing judgment that is impartial and it has various clauses that assist it in executing its mandate. The clauses include statements that support everybody’s right to privacy in issues such as health, private and family life and correspondent and strongly states that any publication in violation should be justified by the press. The clause also speaks against the use of long cameras to take picture of people in private places. The messages are very strong but PCC is not strong enough to exert any legal action against any press material that has violated these statements. Furthermore if the guilty party comes from the press that funds this organization how sure the victims are that due action will be taken without any form of prejudice. However without any due process outlined by a statutory victims of privacy violation and reputation damage in case of a mistrial, have no otherwise except applying for a judicial review. The judicial review is further inefficient because it only looks at the credibility of the process used rather than the credibility of the ruling. The meaning of this is that the courts are can only reverse or refuse a ruling only if it can be out rightly meaningless, but in an opinionated case the court cannot interfere. Cases involving violation of privacy are sometimes very much opinionated and would therefore present difficulties for victims when trying to obtain appeal.

Many cases have presented the difficulty that exists during complaints concerned with privacy violation. For instance the case involving BBC v Barclay brother, Barclay brothers on realizing that BBC had in its possession a film of its private island sought to prevent the broadcast of the film by filing a complaint to the media house. However, the media house refused to tolerate such complaints. Barclay brothers went on and applied for a judicial review which was again rejected because according to the broadcasting Act of 1990 broadcasting could not be prevented prior to. The implications of this kind of law is that even if someone knew that the press had damaging information that they intended to broadcast the person is supposed to wait until the information is available to the public and the damaging effects felt in order to file a complaint. The victim might not even be sure to win the case because the information may be so damaging and traumatizing to the extent that even the public has passed its own judgment and convincing them otherwise would be very difficult. This means that the current laws in fact favor infringement of privacy and as a result there is no effect and substantial way to punish and prevent this kind of crime, a fact which is in complete violation of European Convention rights.

A more complex case involving Jameel v Wall street journal concerning a publication in the newspaper that suggested that Saudi Arabian officials should monitor some bank accounts of certain individuals because they had terrorism ties. Jameel group of companies were listed as some of the companies to be monitored. During the proceedings the jury ruled that the article contained information that compromised the reputation of the complainant because the complainant had done nothing incriminating or that would call for investigations, although the jury prevented the publishing of this article, it was later published after the September 11 catastrophe in New York. After the event the US placed froze many Saudi Arabian accounts especially the ones that had been mentioned in the article. Since most of the suspects were Saudi it was apparent that the UK which was a great supporter of anti terrorism actions of the US was sharing information with its ally. However, this kind of fact was considered sensitive and a matter of national importance and could therefore not be presented in a court of law as part of evidence. In the end the court ruled in favor of the complaint and awarded them money to cover for the damages caused. The proceedings of this case reveal a lot of things about how simple defamatory information can cause so much damage and the implication it would have on an organization or an individual. The reporters who came up with the stories were not even required to present the source of their information because as they claimed, it would place the life of the individuals in danger.

Another case involving the violation of privacy rights was the one of Spencer v United Kingdom. The case was about a publication in a newspaper which provided information and pictures of Countess in a rehabilitation clinic being treated for eating disorders and alcoholism. Further information concerning her family problems was also published.  This was in total violation of the PCC clauses regarding privacy because both personal privacy and family privacy were also violated; even in accordance with the European Convention on Human Rights a crime had been committed against the Countess. However during the reviewing of the case, the Human Rights Commission ruled that the Countess did not enjoy a general right of privacy in accordance with law of confidence. The commission therefore dismissed the complaint on the basis that domestic remedies were not completely exhausted. This means that the United Kingdom had the potential to tackle such as case but that it did not have the relevant machinery in terms of law and due processes. Therefore the commission was silently implying that the law in the UK concerning privacy violation was rather inefficient. In a related case of Peck v UK which involved a CCTV video of a man walking along a public street with a knife. The man who in this case was Peck was very much depressed and had attempted suicide. The PCC refuted Peck’s complaints in the grounds that they were inadmissible. The court ruled that since Peck had not anticipated the extent of exposure it would violate his privacy according to Article 8 in the vent that the footage was made public. However lack of domestic remedy in the UK prevented the case from materializing.

Article 8 of the European convention clearly outlines that a person has the right to a private life in the sense of his or her home, correspondence. This also includes a right to enjoy privacy in terms of correspondence and this is applicable in any democratic society. All the cases outlined above it is apparent that what the UK laws lack is remedies to counteract the infringement of privacy both of individuals and companies which are at times very damaging and whose consequences are irreversible.

References

Judgements- Jameel and others v Wallstreet Journal Europe. Accessed on 18^th April from www. Publications.Parliament.uk/pa/id200506/idjudgmt/jd061011.

Media Law Resource Center: LDRC Forum on English Libel and Privacy Law May 11 and 12, 1998. London England. Accessed on 18^th April, 2009 from www.medialaw.org/template.