Law - Confidentiality and Privacy

Law of Confidence is key to a person keeping their private lives separate from the public. This ensures total privacy with information that is exchanged in a private or confidential circumstance, for example when you are talking to your doctor - all medical files are confidential between doctor and patient.

There are three elements to determine when a breach of confidence has occurred:
- The information must be shared in a confidential manner.
- It must also have the necessary quality of confidence (so it can't be something trivial).
- For action to be taken there must be an unauthorised use of the information.

Journalists must be mindful in terms of confidence and privacy when reporting on three areas:
- Official Secrets Act: this keeps safe all military intelligence information for example the location of bases or information that could be harmful to the safety of the country if it was exposed, much like the phrase 'spilling state secrets'.
- Individual Privacy: Section 8 of the Human Rights act defends individual privacy, so that concerns your family life and anything else that would be deemed out of the public sphere.
- Commercial Confidentiality: this will be in contracts of employees essentially saying they can't release sensitive information that would be damaging to the employer.

You can defence breaches of confidence or privacy by proving if the information did not have the necessary quality of confidence or if the information is in the public sphere. The main defence would be that if it is in the public interest to know this information. Naomi Campbell won a breach of privacy concerning a newspaper publishing images of her leaving a narcotics anonymous meeting.

When a journalist obtains sensitive information they have two choices:
- They can just run the story and face potential legal repercussion, but you should really only do this if you could justify it in the public interest and not merely interesting to the public.
- The other choice is to confront the business / person that the information pertains to and try to get a response, but this could lead to an injunction and therefore the information will be swept under the rug.

Law - Reporting on Elections

Journalists must always be impartial, but this is even more pertinent when it comes to elections and your coverage of them. The big divide between broadcast and print here is that print publications can nail their flag to the mast and outright pick a side in which political party they want to win, this is because newspapers are orientated that way - there have always been specific newspapers for Labour supporters and the same goes for Conservative supporters. 

However, in terms of broadcast we are there to simply cover each 'major' party in an impartial and fair way and major parties have been decided so by Ofcom and the overall popularity of a political party. For example, it used to be that the major parties consisted of Labour, Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, but due to a surge in popularity and support, Ofcom have said that UKIP should now be considered a major party when it comes to reporting the European elections.

Defamation is an ever present risk to publications at election time - simply because the warring parties might spread defamatory statements or comments about another candidate and since it is just them spouting off accusations there is no privilege involved to protect the media in highlighting the statements made and if they were to do so then the journalist or the publication could get sued. An example of this would be in 2010 concerning Phil Woolas. Woolas is a former Labour Government Minister and he lost the Oldham East seat which he had previously with a majority of 103. He suffered a three year ban after being convicted of publishing false statements about the rival candidate in one of his leaflets and thus suffered the consequences. 

Under the Representation of the People Act 1983 - it is a criminal offence to publish an exit poll or exposing how other people have voted, before the polls are fully closed. This is because people would make of note of who has a chance of wining and if it were someone they didn't want to win then that would lead to a great deal of tactical voting - though this happens it generally would make the whole election corrupt and unfair as it is doctoring a specific outcome with a great deal of foreknowledge.

Further under this act it is deemed a criminal offence to publish anything remotely false about any election candidate, especially if the desired outcome would be to sway the minds of the voters. If you publish something particularly damning then it better be justified and justifiable. Basically, it has to be true so don't bother lying.

Law - Regulatory Codes

Regulations are in place for a reason! That reason being to keep us journalists on the right tracks in terms of morality and behaviour when it comes to stories, sourcing the stories and clearly outlining what is seen as justified. These regulations deal with ethics and an overall respect and understanding of privacy and where to draw the line.

Regulatory bodies:
The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) governs print and other magazine publications.
- If someone has a problem with something thats been published in a news paper or a magazine then these guys are the people that handle it. 

- The BBC have their own set of regulations and guidelines but they still have to follow the rules outlined by Ofcom because otherwise they could get themselves in to some serious trouble.

The Office of Communications (Ofcom) governs broadcast journalism.
- Ofcom holds a great deal of power and it can force public apologies, implement large fines and revoke a publication's broadcasting license. That means you have to follow the rules no matter what, no getting away with anything with these guys.

In general terms codes of practice focus on these areas:
- Protecting youths and children
- Fair treatment
- Ethical behaviour
- Respecting Privacy