2513LHS Media Law- Essay PDF

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2513LHS Media Law - Law Reform Essay Length: 1213 words. Course Convenor: Mark Pearson Author: Laurynn

Professional Communicators have an inherent responsibility to produce relevant, accurate and informative reports to adequately reflect the current political climate to the public as an executive function of the fourth estate to democracy. For political journalists producing reports requires maintaining a balance between the disclosure of relevant information and adherence to privacy law for the individuals. This essay will be focusing predominantly on the pressures and responsibilities in the overlap of the fields of public interest reporting and political journalism and how Australian privacy law has both affected the ways in which each practice is able to publish.

James Carey in 1987 accurately contextualised the relationship between journalists and the public; as an institution existing “to inform the public, to serve as the extended eyes and ears of the public, to protect the public’s right to know, to serve the public” [CITATION Car87 \p 6-15 \l 3081 ]. The socially developed nexus of ideas has established this concept as an ever-more critical doctrine, through the determination of the news media as the fourth estate to democracy. The consequential practice of public interest journalism has been provided with a legislative codification of rules, privileges and responsibilities attributed to the professional communicators in this field. These are intended to abet and curtail the privileges of these practitioners.

Privacy law is just one of such federally binding legislation and currently poses the most interesting challenges to public interest reporting. The objective of Privacy law attempts to provide an inalienable right of individuals to be free from arbitrary and unlawful interference with their privacy as an inclusive value of their; family, home, correspondence, honor and reputation– as per The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights[CITATION Off76 \l 3081 ]. This deliberates as per chapter 2 of the Privacy Act ( Privacy Act, 1989 ch2) that privacy in Australia is a critical public interest but cannot be the only noor demand complete superiority above other principles [ CITATION Aus14 \l 3081 ]

Henceforth, the assertion of the news media as the fourth estate to democracy and the subsequent reliance upon the disclosure of important and often information can ostensibly contend with the doctrines provided within the Privacy Act of 1988 [ CITATION Pri88 \l 3081 ] As such, professional communicators are required to balance the disciplines of privacy law with the responsibilities of public interest reporting to provide adequate reports to the public. This requires a practice of the news media to appropriately implement moral determinations in their publishing of sensitive information.

The deliberation of ethical dilemmas within journalism largely involve the legal differentiations between public interest reporting and the inalienable right of privacy for individuals. A clear case showcasing the blurring lines between these doctrines occurred in 2010 when news broke of New South Wales former transport minister David Campbell having visited a gay sex club [CITATION Aus \l 3081 ]. This reporting was largely condemned for its intrusive nature and overreach, specifically balancing the differentiations between public interest reporting and reporting for the interest of the public; and yet no legal actions could be taken for the perceptual importance of public interest reporting is currently outweighed by the right to privacy. Although reporting journalist Peter Meakin defended his rights to publish this story as a matter of public interest in the adequate coverage of relevant political matters, his report fails to meet the legislative requirements for appropriate implementation of the Australian Privacy Principles as a deciding matter for the Public Interest Determination. Division one of the Privacy Act defines the Australian Privacy Principles as being protective measures against the collection and distribution of an individual's personal data [ CITATION Pri88 \l 3081 ]. This is further enforced through 16A where the conditions conducive to the disclosure of information that would be considered a breach of privacy are discussed as objectively parallel to the principles of The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. The determination of information that is protected under this legislation therefore exists through the deliberation of the importance of information as through its very existence and subsequent collection without consent. To determine it as “private” is, through various definitions of the constitutions for information is considered under Division one, but does not provide an allencompasing definition of information that may be considered in the courts as to be protected by this legislation.

The Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism discussed the particular importance of attributing the proper weight to competing public interests, especially in Australia where there is no statutory frameworks or constitutional protections for the doctrines of human rights or freedom of speech whereby the right to privacy may outweigh the rights to some other privileges [ CITATION The18 \l 3081 ] . Henceforth it is most pertinent critical to deliberate the importance of public interest values such as privacy and political transparency as independently measurable and of comparable weighting and implement the provisional frameworks to allow protective measures for each principle [CITATION Mor02 \p 13 \l 3081 ]. the courts of Australia have increasingly established a precedent whereby a test of reasonableness is utilised to prove the considerable offence an individual might take to their data being published in an unauthorised medium [ CITATION Wit18 \l 3081 ]. This generally relies on the perception of general opinion for a community and is usually not as closely aligned to the actual values of the community as one would hope (). Therefore, journalists abiding by the principles of privacy legislation may well be more important than following a ‘by the letter of the law’ approach to publishing. Whereby it may be, through a technicality, legal to publish a report such as Meakins- in the name of public interest, but the ethical ramifications far outweigh the interest to the public [CITATION Rho19 \p 87-89 \l 3081 ]. Here journalists must understand completely their role as a fourth estate to democracy to detail their responsibilities to public interest publishing, but also present reasonable ethical codes to curtail the complete overreach of the news media in publishing (https://www.alrc.gov.au/publication/serious-invasions-of-privacyin-the-digital-era-alrc-report-123/14-surveillance-devices/responsible-journalism-and-the-publicinterest/). These principles are made even more relevant through the developments in global politics, which has seen the restriction of privacy rights to individuals by government and non state actors [ CITATION Ger19 \l 3081 ]. Ultimately this has necessitated the roles of media communicators to much more heavily rely on community standards and terms of service of digital platforms to ensure that the public interest of privacy is upheld in publications. As such, journalists are required to take up the ethical dilemmas and abritory roles of creating self-governing restrictions to present the adequate and responsible publishing [ CITATION Son17 \l 3081 ].

Publishing has always required a balancing of rights of individuals and the public interest values, but in today's climate the potential for overreach has exponentially increased. Privacy laws in the modern era are almost impossible to implement and therefore, until the legislation is able to comprehensively protect this public interest value– it is critical that journalists understand the weight of their responsibility and implement mindful publishing practices as necessitated. The principle of public interest reporting should never be overlooked for its critical role in society as an important mechanism to uphold democracy but should equally not be utilised as an ad hoc argument for media and publishing overreach in the collection and distribution of private data. Bibliography Australian Broadcasting Corporation. 2010. ABC News Archives: Ethical Questions Raised by the Outing of David Campbell . 3 21. Accessed 12 1, 2020. https://www.abc.net.au/pm/content/2010/s2906275.htm. Australian Law Reform Comission. 2014. "Serious Invasions Of Privacy In The Digital Era." Law Reform Report, Australian Government, ch 8. Breit, Rhonda. 2019. Professional Communication : Legal and Ethical Issues. LexisNexis. Carey, James W. 1987. "The Press and Public Discourse." The Center Magazine, 4 20: 6-15. Gerard Goggin, Ariadne Vromen, Kimberlee Weatherall, Fiona Martin, and Lucy Sunman. 2019. "Data and digital rights: recent Australian developments." Internet Policy Reveiw 8 (1). Morrison, David E., and Michael Svennevig. 2002. "The Public Interest, the Media and Privacy." Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights. 1976. International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights: Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. United Nations Covenant, United Nations. Privacy Act . 1988. C2014C00076 (Federal Legislation). Sonja, Kleinke, and Elif Avcu. 2017. "Public discourse beyond the mainstream media: Intercultural conflict in socio-political discussion fora." Discourse, Context & Media 19: 49-57.

The Senate: Commonwealth of Australia . 2018. Select Committee on the Future of Public Interest Journalism. Commonwealth of Australia ISBN 978-1-76010-698-0. Witzleb, Normann. 2018. Determinations Under the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) as a Privacy Remedy. Monash University Faculty of Law Legal Studies Research Paper, Faculty of Law, Monash University, Monash University....