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« Name suppression not automatic in diversion cases | Main | Injunction continued again »

Press Council upholds Bill English complaint

By Steven | March 7, 2008

Remember the kurfuffle about Bill English’s 14-year-old son posting homophobic remarks on Bebo? The Press Council says that the Southland Times’ coverage breached the paper’s duty to respect privacy of “person, space and personal information” and to exercise “particular care and consideration when reporting on and about children and young people.”

The Southland Times’ front-page story was headed “English may sue on GayNZ article”. It named Rory, though other media (including GayNZ) apparently had mostly just called him English’s son. It quoted from the remarks Rory had made. English complained that there was no justification for “selecting my son for special treatment” which was harshly critical and unbalanced. (He wasn’t complaining about balance, but apparently argued that these factors showed a lack of consideration for Rory). English said his son was entitled to privacy and that he wasn’t a public figure or prop for English’s political activities.

The paper noted that the website was open to public view, and that English had written a column stating “I am totally responsible fro my children’s physical and moral welfare… in fact too many parents now lack confidence in their ability to give children direction.”

The ruling isn’t available on the website, so I’ll post the key part here. The decision was unanimous.

The Southland Times has essentially justified publication of this article on the fact of Mr English’s local and national prominence and on what the newspaper believes to have been his public advocacy of “family values”.

The Press Council finds it unacceptable that a regional newspaper should justify naming and – in effect – shaming a 14 year-old on the grounds that his father is a local representative in Parliament and a national figure and on the basis of assertions as to the father’s political position on morality issues.

 

This is the more so since the newspaper seems to have had little heed for the requirement to proceed with care in reporting on the activities of a young person, who, in this case may simply have done something very immature. 

 

The boy, after all, is a minor.  As Mr English points out, he would have been entitled to name suppression, even if he had committed a crime – up to the age of 17.  Mr English had also made the point that he had no obligation to comment, when asked to do so by the reporter, since he had never brought his family into the public arena. 

 

The newspaper had a point in respect of the principle of privacy.  The Bebo website is public and users who put out comment and other information on it should understand that. If they do so in their own name they must anticipate the consequences, including a reaction from groups who take exception to remarks made.

 

There is, however, a linkage between the twin grounds on which this complaint is based – privacy and the need for care and consideration in reporting on young people.   This is because a child’s privacy is one of the factors which needs to be taken into consideration when reporting on or about children.

 

The need to protect a young person from being harmed by the glare of publicity necessarily means that matters that can be published about an adult should be treated with greater circumspection and sensitivity in the case of a child.

 There is now considerable debate about the extent to which celebrities and those identified with them are entitled to the protection of privacy. But the Press Council does not see that Mr English’s privacy is a factor in this matter.    

The Press Council accepts nevertheless that a public figure has the same right as every other citizen to expect his or her young children to be protected, unless there is a demonstrable justification for drawing the young person into the limelight.

 

The Council upholds Mr English’s complaint.

I have a few misgivings about this decision. I am still inclined to think that Rory’s remarks were using homophobic epithets to attack emo devotees. It wasn’t pretty, but it wasn’t extreme homophobia. And although it was a public website, people using them can paradoxically have something approaching a reasonable expectation that it will only be read by a small community of people. And he was 14. I wouldn’t want everything I said at 14 flashed up in the national media. So I have some sympathy for the criticism that the media overdid this.

But there are a couple of aspects of the decision that don’t make much sense to me. First: is this really about privacy at all? The comments were on a public website. He had already been identified in the media as Bill English’s son. Cat’s out of the bag, guys. I can’t see that there’s any private information (ie Rory’s name) left here to protect. Note that the Press Council’s principle dealing with privacy excludes matters of public record. Wouldn’t the Press Council regard something on a publicly accessible website as a matter of public record in most other circumstances? I can’t imagine the BSA upholding a complaint based on privacy here. There’s no “private fact”. I think this points up the undeveloped, ad hoc, and intuitive nature of the Press Council’s privacy jurisprudence. Perhaps the decision is best read as resting on the “care and consideration” of children and young people. To the extent that the decision is founded on privacy, or even a “linkage” with privacy, I think it’s flawed.

The other point is the Press Council’s acceptance that English “had never brought his family into the public arena”. Really? So he’s never used happy family snaps in his political campaigns? And what about that column he wrote? Arguably that’s not enough to make his son fair game. But there’s no recognition in the decision that the family or associates of public figures may have reduced expectations of privacy in some circumstances, something even the courts have accepted. Nor is there any recognition that the attitudes revealed in the “toxic diatribes“, posted in public, by the son of a man who would be deputy PM and who champions family values, might be a “demonstrable justification” for running the story.

I’m not entirely sure I buy these arguments. But I don’t dismiss them either. For me, I think, this story lies in the grey zone: it should be open to criticism but not sanction.

Bonus zinger: as long as the the Press Council is going to throw about the language of “demonstrable justification”, it really ought to remember that under the Bill of Rights Act, the question is whether there is demonstable justification for its ruling interfering with the freedom of expression of the paper.

[I’ve received a comment that I am over-emphasising the privacy aspect of the decision, and under-emphasising the consideration-of-child’s-interests aspect. On one reading, the decision is not based on the principle relating to privacy at all. Privacy is merely a factor that makes the lack of consideration for the child greater. At any event, it is clear from the decision that this complaint would not have been upheld if it was about an adult. Comment was also passed that the Press Council carefully refrained from naming the boy. Was I too mean in doing so?]

Topics: Broadcasting Standards Authority, NZ Bill of Rights Act, Press Council | 43 Comments »

43 Responses to “Press Council upholds Bill English complaint”

1. Russell Brown Says:
   March 12th, 2008 at 12:36 pm

   Although it’s not directly related the case, I did look at Rory’s page and those linked to it, including his brother and friends (their sister already had her profile set to private) and I was struck by how much there would have perturbed parents. I couldn’t tell whether they didn’t grasp that it was a public space, or just didn’t care.

   One thing that makes Bebo somewhat less public is that you’ll rarely find a Bebo page in the first 10 pages of a Google search. Because there are so few inbound links to Bebo profiles, Google’s algorithm rates them lowly.

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