Parliamentary group advocates journalists informing subjects of their stories before going to print

The House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee has issued a report calling for the Press Complaints Commission to recommend journalists to pre-notify people who are the subject of stories before publishing. However, it has said that the Government should not pass laws to develop the laws of privacy: it said it was better off left to the courts to develop privacy laws under the Human Rights Act as they had done until now. Max Mosley, who won a controversial court case giving him damages for invasion of his privacy in 2008, told the Committee that he thought there should be a law requiring journalists to contact anyone featuring in their stories before they could publish them, but the Committee heard other evidence saying that a legal requirement to pre-notify would be going too far. That’s why they thought it was best to leave it to the Press Commission to decide.

Paul Gershlick, a Partner at Matthew Arnold & Baldwin LLP and editor of www.upload-it.com, comments: ‘This is a cop-out by the Parliamentary Committee. A few years ago, they recommended that the Government should pass a new privacy law so that people knew where they stood. In the last couple of years, there has become even greater uncertainty as to what the press could say and in what circumstances without infringing people’s privacy rights. Now, more than ever, is a need to clarify the law in this area. Yet, the Committee has failed to come up with a decisive recommendation.’