Privacy: Press Complaint’s Commission Code of Practice (UK), 1997
privatization of information itself; or as some
commentators have put it, the commoditization
of information. In fact the process commenced
with the expansionism of multi-national, multi-
product corporations after the Second World
War.
It was soon perceived that in the developing
Age of Information, information was profi table.
Corporations which were not already owners of
media, bought into media. Private ownership
and its dominance of cultural and social expres-
sion, whether in the arts, education, the muse-
ums service, libraries, sport or entertainment
generally, came up against a major competitor:
the public sector. In this domain, information
was treated as a public right available to all
rather than essentially a saleable commodity.
Such rivalry in an increasingly competitive
world was considered bad for private business.
It became, then, corporate policy to pressurize
governments into dismantling the public sector.
Rightist governments in the 1980s and 1990s
(the US under Ronald Reagan and George Bush
Sr, the UK under Margaret Th atcher and John
Major) made privatization the driving-force of
political and cultural change. Notions of ‘public
good’ or ‘public interest’ were to become condi-
tional upon the requirements of ‘market forces’;
as was social responsibility. See communica-
tions act (uk), 2003.
At a global level, privatization has been linked
with financial and technical aid. The World
Bank and International Monetary Fund (IMF),
for example, have refused economic assistance
to developing nations wishing to update their
telecommunications systems unless these have
fi rst been privatized. Telmex, the Mexican state-
owned telecommunications system, privatized
in 1990, increased the local telephone rate by
over a thousand percent in the next decade.
Th e chief benefi ciaries of cross-world priva-
tization of previously state-run systems have
been American-owned tele-corporations. Th ese
hold substantial and increasing investments in
operations in more than thirty-six countries.
Corporate ambitions have made substantial
headway in the world of the internet, which
itself has given burgeoning life to corporate
giants (see google; facebook). What incom-
ing corporations are not happy about is the
tradition of the Net to supply most services to
users free of charge. Commentors express fears
that gradually, cyberspace will echo to the sound
of cash-tills (see paywall).
Support in the European Community for
public service broadcasting (psb), andunder media: freedom, censorship; media
issues & debates.
Privacy: Press Complaint’s Commission
Code of Practice (UK), 1997 Following the
death of Diana, Princess of Wales in a car crash
in Paris, and the widespread belief that this had
been caused in part by the hounding of her by
paparazzi, the UK Press Complaints Commis-
sion issued in December 1997 a Code of Practice
concerning privacy and press harassment.
Clause 3 of the Code declares that ‘everyone
is entitled to respect for his or her privacy and
family life, home, health and correspondence. A
publication will be expected to justify intrusion
into any individual’s life without consent’. Taking
pictures of people ‘in private places without their
consent is wholly unacceptable’, a private place
being ‘public or private property where there is a
reasonable expectation of privacy’.
On harassment, Clause 4 urges that journal-
ists and photographers ‘must neither obtain nor
seek to obtain information or pictures through
intimidation, harassment or persistent pursuit’
and this extends to ‘telephoning, questioning,
pursuing or photographing individuals after
having been asked to desist’. Th e Code also sets
out rules concerning intrusion into the lives of
children, banning press payment to minors.
Th e Code is self-regulatory, without the power
of law, being the creation of the newspaper
industry. It draws upon the European Conven-
tion for the Protection of Human Rights and
Fundamental Freedoms, Article 8 of which,
having asserted the right of the citizen to respect
for his/her privacy and family, home and corre-
spondence, then lists the exceptions to the rule
of personal privacy: ‘Th ere shall be no interfer-
ence by a public authority with the exercise of
this right except such as is in accordance with
the law or is necessary ... in the interests of
national security, public safety or the economic
well-being of the country, for the prevention of
disorder or crime, for the protection of health
or morals, or for the protection of the rights and
freedoms of others.’
An unenforcible code is a code that can
be conveniently broken. The most notorious
recent case of this was the involvement of the
UK News of the World (a Murdoch newspaper)
in a phone-hacking scandal (see journalism:
phone-hacking).
Privatization Dominant trend in media organi-
zation throughout the 1980s and 1990s, in which
public-owned media utilities were sold off into
private hands; specifi cally into those of the great
transnational companies (TNCs); and with it the