APPENDIX 50
Memorandum submitted by the Editor of
the Daily Star
I am the Editor of the Daily Star newspaper.
I have been involve with newspapers for many years. Apart from
the Daily Star, I have worked for the Daily Mirror,
the People and the Daily Telegraph, plus a number
of regional newspapers including the Huddersfield Examiner
and the Manchester Evening News.
I vigorously oppose the introduction of a privacy
law. No doubt, some would say that as a national newspaper editor
I would, wouldn't I. However, I believe there are strong and valid
reasons for my view.
Newspapers are different from the broadcast
media. Newspapers are not bound by statutory duties to be fair
and impartial when presenting the news. This enables the public
to have a wide spread of strong and often controversial views
from all sides of the political spectrum from its print media
Indeed this freedom has served in the public interest by creating
a vigorous, diverse and questing press that has no equal.
Sometimes newspapers have gone too far, although
not often with regard to Privacy. Most of the problems have been
with inaccuracy, albeit often the publications themselves were
in good faith. However, the law of defamation more than adequately
offers redress for these problems as does the present PCC Code.
I certainly take full account of the PCC Code
of Practice in my day to day work. I can't remember when the Daily
Star last had a serious complaint upheld. The Press Complaints
Commission does work. It resolves the vast bulk of issues brought
before it, both quickly and at no cost. Very few complaints really
involve the question of privacy—many of those are often,
in reality, claims about unwanted publicity.
Publishers are already constrained by a mass
of law: confidence, libel, contempt, Data Protection Act, Official
Secrets Act. As an editor I live daily under the possibility of
onerous, even criminal sanctions. Added to this, the recent introduction
of no win no fee litigation has enabled libel solicitors to cash
in on cases where the burden of proof is already weighted heavily
in favour of a claimant. Solicitors charging up to £350 per
hour can now claim up to a 100% uplift in fees in such litigation
in the safe knowledge that they can sit back with little or no
burden of proof for them, to see whether the newspaper can prove
its defence.
I strongly believe that people in public life,
who derive fame and wealth, or power, from public acclaim should
expect a lesser right to privacy than ordinary people. In my experience
celebrities—and I include many politicians—will do
anything to get their faces in the newspapers. When it suits them.
Yet they also want to control every aspect of
their image. They try to demand copy approval, they want you to
use only pictures supplied by their own photographers, they want
interviews to be vetted and controlled by heir own PR people.
It's all about news management. And wouldn't
politicians just love to be able to manage the news.
The most dire invasion of privacy I've ever
been accused of involved a young actress, pictured topless on
holiday. It became a confidence case in the courts. Even then,
the judge observed wryly that one possible reason for her upset
might have been that she was in her curlers. There are many other
pictures of this same actress actually posing in a salacious manner.
In the event, both parties wished to settle and a settlement was
agreed in which we paid damages and costs.
But she didn't need a privacy law to protect
her. She was already able to claim redress through existing laws,
in this case that of confidentiality.
What really concerns me is that unscrupulous
people would use any privacy law to keep unpleasant facts about
them from the public. And you only have to look at a very famous
case in France right now to see that top politicians would manipulate
privacy laws to hide things from the voters.
Very very few ordinary people are troubled by
problems involving privacy. If they are, the Press Complaints
Commission is there to deal fairly and swiftly with complaints
or, if necessary, the courts are there with a vast battery of
existing law which already makes a mockery of the notion that
the Press is free. It isn't.
So please don't burden it with even more restrictions.
12 February 2003
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