Peers seek guidelines on public interest defence

PROSECUTING authorities should publish clear guidelines to tell journalists if they are likely to face charges for breaking the law in pursuit of a story, a parliamentary committee said in a report.

The House of Lords Communications Committee said there was a “lack of clarity” in the law about when journalists can cite the public interest as a defence.

Their report – a copy of which has been sent to the Leveson Inquiry into media ethics – found that investigative journalism was “a vital constituent of the UK’s system of democratic governance and accountability”.

But it said reporters and editors currently face tough decisions on whether to go ahead with investigations, because “inconsistency” in the law makes it difficult for them to judge whether they might end up in court.

Panorama editor Tom Giles acknowledged the BBC programme’s undercover reporters had broken the law by breaching privacy or providing false CVs in order to get information for the public good, while Sky’s deputy head of news, Chris Birkett, said his crews sometimes had to break the law in countries like Syria, where they were barred from filming.

The peers warned: “Inconsistency in legislation often makes the decision for journalists and editors as to whether they may be able to break a law in order to uncover certain information and subsequently argue successfully the public interest in their defence all the more difficult.”

While the Data Protection Act allows a public interest defence, there is no such provision in other laws which journalists might fall foul of – such as the Official Secrets Act.