Mr Callaghan’s decision to set up a committee to inquire into the whole question of privacy is welcome. For while there is widespread agreement about the need to protect the individual against invasions of his privacy, the question of how best to do this is not nearly so clear.
First, is it necessary to introduce a general law of privacy – or would it be better to make separate provision for bugging devices, computer records and other technological threats? Second, if Mr Brian Walden’s case for a general law of privacy is accepted, how can it best be reconciled with the freedom of inquiry by Press and television?
It would be a mistake for newspapers to be too self-righteous on this point. For while it is clear that many of their inquiries are in the public interest it is equally obvious that this is not universally true. The real issue is whether newspapers should be left free to decide for themselves when they are acting in the public interest, whether this should be determined by the courts, or by some extension of the “voluntary” principle of public exposure embodied in the Press Council procedure.
Newspapers should welcome this discussion. For their strength depends on public support – and this support, now often tinged with suspicion of their power, might become stronger if newspapers accept that they cannot always be their own judges.
Key quote
‘I’ve a horrible prospect of a world which is going to die of containers of unreturnable bottles’
Lord Ritchie-Calder, author and academic
Talking point
Family Planning Association clinics have received an unprecedented number of inquiries in the last month about sterilisation for men – a form of birth control that less than five years ago most men dismissed suspiciously as a threat to their manhood.
‘Sterilisation gains favour’, news story