The attitude of the British media in general has up to now been that there is no such thing as a privacy law, and no need for one. After Mosley, that position is no longer tenable. The matter should, very soon, be tackled openly – because there is more at issue here than press freedom alone. As Henry Porter pointed out in The Observer, the privacy of British residents is now under threat not so much from the press as from a national Government obsessed with security and crime, and from local government determined to prevent trivial offences. At one end of the scale, Porter wrote, “the Government plans legislation to give the state access to every email, phone call, text message and internet connection made in this country”. At the other, “in the last year local councils have launched 10,000 operations to spy on members of the public who are thought to be guilty of minor misdemeanours such as fly-tipping, avoiding council tax or applying to a school outside their area”. Succinctly put, even if some 16 years after John Pilger warned, in his introduction to a collection entitled Distant Voices: “The lost issue is to protect the public from the State, not the press.”

Only the media are in a position to monitor and report the intrusions of government on the private lives of citizens, and provide a focus for resistance and opposition to the growth of official prying. In vigorously doing so, there is a clear opportunity for the trust and respect of the public, so much diminished in recent times – witness the BJR/YouGov survey published in our last issue – to be regained. But even the most concerted effort by individual publications and broadcasters is unlikely to be enough to restore self-respect to industries that lurch deeper and deeper into a jungle of privacy restrictions. What is needed is a co-ordinated effort throughout the media, but mainly by the more-affected press, to make the public aware of curbs on freedom, personal and media, by stealth.

The BJR has long urged visible action. As a first step, the creation of a press industry-wide council to examine the issue of privacy and intrusion would indicate that newspapers are not content simply to duck and weave and pay arbitrary damages plus costs at the behest of the judiciary. To guarantee that such a body would not be seen merely as a subservient mouthpiece, it should include lay members, media academics and legal experts. It could take on a role similar to that of a parliamentary select committee, investigating every aspect of privacy and its preservation in the face of the depredations of the State and, yes, the media as well. (There is no point in trying to deny that many have suffered as the result of the mistaken view among some journalists that they have a right to poke their noses into the private lives of their fellow-citizens, no matter what.) The report on the evidence and conclusions of such a body would stimulate a serious debate not just among politicians, but among members of the public.

It is worth recalling that in 1988 the Labour Party, then in opposition, produced a discussion document, Freeing the Press, which, among other things, proposed a legally-binding obligation on owners to guarantee editorial independence. In the subsequent 20 years, such high-minded, if over-ambitious, ideals have been replaced – with the support of politicians of all parties – by the relentless advance of furtive media repression.

Back in 1955, Randolph Churchill had this advice for anyone who had attracted the unwelcome attentions of the press: “If your house is besieged by scores of photographers and reporters, it is probably best to telephone the police and inform them that the traffic is being obstructed outside your house and to ask that a constable be sent to disperse the crowd.” It probably would have worked in those days, particularly if your name was Churchill. It might even clear a bunch of hacks off your doorstep nowadays. But it wouldn’t have much effect on the spies who snoop for the State. — BH