#publicintrest

·      Introduction:

The meaning behind the word ‘public interest’ got misused in a lot of cases and it is not easy to define since not all the public are interested in the same subjects. Jane Johnston (2017: np) throughout her article she found a different definition of the public interest from a variety of people and one of them was Christ Wheeler expressing his opinion by saying that this term is used a lot, nevertheless, it is the least explain and understand.

There has been a long process of arguments regarding on how much freedom to give to the media for expression and where do we draw the red line and respect the individuals’ private lives and stop leaking private information. The structure throughout this essay consists of ten points analysing and investigating the meaning behind public interest.

·      The meaning of public interest:

The historical meaning of public interest means according to The Ethical Journalism Network (undated: np) is what for the good and matters to each person in society. Though in recent decades, it is come to be used with the meaning of what interests the public, which means gossip as it is human nature as a lot of us like to gossip, however, in most cases, a lot of people see it that it is not in the public interest.

Since day one, journalism was all about making sure to inform the people on what is happening in any subject so they can have a democratic society. Lynette Sheridan Burns and Benjamin J Matthews (2002: np) shared their opinions regarding public interest or public good, they are the people who have the rights from the journalist to tell them the “things they need to have the right to know” about.

·      Freedom of expression for the public interest:

Each person has their own thoughts and ideas and everyone should have the chance of expressing themselves especially if it is in the public interest. Ashley Savage (2016: 262) urges in her book that every individual have the right to freedom of expressions, however, this “freedom of expression “can be very difficult to justify when a piece of particular information does not apply for the interest of the public. You always have to have a reason why you want to publish certain information.

Because of this freedom a lot of people are in a position of authority to leak private information’s and they think they have the right to interfere in someone’s life using the excuse that it is for the public interest, although, in most cases a fair amount of people see it as it is just interesting to the public and filling the gap in the news pages.

In my opinion, freedom of expression is fundamental in a decametric society. Once there is regulation on freedom of expression there will be no point of delivering news because people will doubt the accuracy of the news that is presented to them because of the regulation.

If we will have restricted laws on a journalist it will be a big dilemma because there will be a lot of stories will be uncovered, therefore, there will be people outside will feel a bit comfortable doing what they want, as they know the attention they may receive from the media will be diminished. Sport Direct scandal is one of the examples when a journalist uncovered how the staff were being treated in the warehouse and not been paying the minimum wage when the owner Mike Ashely is the 22ndwealthiest individual in the UK.

·      Media dilemma:

The past years the media industry especially the journalists is facing a very big dilemma David E. Morrison et al (2007: 311) in there book Media and Values the authors strongly believe the media mainly the press have a significant dilemma whereby the general public simply do not have trust for the press, for instance, the police force is well trusted throughout the country to be able to intrude into privacy as they are doing this within the confines of the law.

The reason why media outlets especially the press cannot be trusted with this invasion of privacy is, they are not acting on behalf of the people’s interest but rather “what they do is largely done out of self-interest, even though it might be in the public interest.”

I believe that in that the media industry in this era up to a certain level they think about themselves regarding their income and how to attract people’s attention to read on online articles and how to get more clicks so in that way they can attract more advertising companies. Daily mail was exposed by rewriting news stories from other websites and published them on their website.

The House of Commons (2003: 11) believes these are the two main methods for media intrusion. A lot of these methods can be illegal but the journalist always justified it that he or she did it for the public interest. However, can a journalist get away from getting important information in an illegal way?

The parliament publications (2012: np) which I agree on published what Nick Davies said that he sees the journalist as a normal citizen who does not have the right to break the law but, he referred that all of the citizens have the right to break the law if it is an extreme circumstance under very morally sensitive situations. The thought of me agreeing on what he said because I think most of the better quality stories come from breaking the law and the rules.

·      Method of newsgathering:

The first form is unethical newsgathering which includes the use of long lens cameras, hidden cameras, phone hacking or interference of emails to peer in or around private fields. Which it affected a lot of people’s lives in a direct way, for example, the famous case of the phone hacking when editor Rebekah Brooks hacked Milly Dowler phone when she was kidnapped.

The purpose of a long lens so the objects can appear magnified. It is used in most cases for famous people to see what they are doing within their personal lives. The second method is the traditional method, trying to gather private information from the public, for example, the police, BT, private detective agencies.

·      BBC survey regarding public interest:

In the UK most of the different media industry intrudes in people’s lives but not all of them does this frequently. To know more about the relation between the media industry and public interests. I found different surveys searches that the BBC did (2002: pp) which relates to media and public interest. On the first table, it showed if the main media truly serve the public interest. BBC TV had the highest percentage however, Channel 5 got a low percentage of public interest as it had mixed opinions on it.

The media covers a lot of material so table number two shows how much media coverage should be given to certain subjects. It showed the public is interested to know about the details of a serious crime rather than watching the lives of film stars which is called ‘reality TV’. The last table shows peoples opinion on different types of media that tries to intrude people’s private lives. It is been known for years that the tabloid newspapers do this so they took the highest percentage.

·      Publishing private information and revealing someone’s identity:

Confidentiality is a serious test of ethical journalism and it should be respected. It must be the number one moral in any journalist and be reiterated often. The reason why is because not only can it affect people’s lives in a direct or indirect way but, furthermore, there is an enormous amount of people who do not want to be the highlight of the day.

Nevertheless, I believe there are some circumstances where journalists have to reveal a person’s identity. Ethical Journalism Network (undated: np) suggested that journalist have one exception to intrude into private lives. Firstly, people who heavily rely on their public image for their income, for instance, politicians. Secondly, people who have a duty to the public like, police officers, doctors, and teachers.

The second point is justified by that their private affairs could have an essential effect on their public responsibilities. An example of this, the Metro newspaper published about the MP Andrew Griffiths sexting a barmaid and her friend. Within this point, I disagree with the Ethical Journalism Network up to a certain point.

Every job has public responsibilities and everyone relays on their image for their income. Digging in someone’s private life just to find if they are doing something wrong is known to be unethical, furthermore, it is hard to deny that it is interesting. Even if a journalist did not dig into a person’s life that does not mean it stops there.

As Philip Petit said in his book (2001: np) “In all cases, someone lives at the mercy of others. That person is dominated by those others in the sense that even if the others don’t interfere in his or her life.” Additionally, there should a law just for protecting the person’s identity in some cases just because it could take a person’s life or he/she could put their lives in danger and some of them they take their own lives just because they are on the spotlight.

Jacintha Saldannha is a big example of that, the nurse who committed suicide three days after falling for a phone prank as part of a radio show. Her identity was realised by the media, till this day no know knows the reason why she did that, but, in my opinion, I think it was widely reported thus, a lot of the people feel pressure from the media, therefore, they will feel the pressure from other people around them.  

In my opinion, leaking privet information can be justified if privet information is important. Every a journalist has to have considered when revealing the person’s identity to the world, even if a journalist thinks that person has to be identified because they did something good or bad, because there is a fair amount of people out there does not want to identify if they did something good. Unless a person is potentially dangerous to society then their identity should be revealed.

Journalists are trained to get certain information, for example, name, age, address and occupation. Because of these information, I believe it gives context to a news story. But, if the journalist is not careful and irresponsible there intervention can have very serious consequences.

·      How to know what is in the public interest:

It is difficult to know if a certain news story whether it is in the public interest or interest of the public. That is why ICAEW (undated: np) did a report on public interest. They created a diagram (refer to diagram 1) that outlines the seven significant parts. In the last point “implementation” It gave a quick solution for a journalist to know whether this subject is a public interest or not. And that is to think of the effect of the publication and if society will benefit from it or not.  

If the journalist started to apply this rule there will be a lot of cases not covered. I strongly agree with ICAEW point, to illustrate my argument here is an example. Back in 2017  and after what happened in Grenfell Tower most media tried to focus on covering the humanity side story, here is one example out of a hundreds, ITV recently shared a story of one of Grenfell survivor and this is the headline of the report “Grenfell survivor recalls last phone call with friend killed in blaze” (2018, np) as a result of these many stories, the society is standing with them and fighting for their rights.

I can conclude that you cannot know if a news story is in the public interest or not because each individual will have a different reaction to it. In the end, the journalist is working for the people and as David H. Weaver and Lars Willnat (2012: 161) believe in their book “The journalist finds it important to be representative of the public.” in the end, the journalist is working for the people and has a strong voice on behalf of them to deliver new stories.

·      The relationship between news values and the public interest :

News can be divided into lots of categories such as sports news, politics news and so on, that shows how much news values can be found in each news story and how much the public is interested because if they are not, the media would not have a whole category for a certain thing. According to David E. Morrison et al (2007: 261) “Public interest and news values interact in the most complex manner.” They explain further sometimes news value “masquerades” as a public interest and vice versa. In my view, there is a direct correlation between news values and public interest.

The simplest way to define public interest is that anything that can be made newsworthy can subsequently be within the public interest. I believe in each story it can affect the public in a direct or indirect way.

To explain my point further, here is an example, the next day of Bonfire night 2018, Metro newspaper published on their first page about a group of people were laughing and mocking as they burned a model of Grenfell Tower (refer to image 1). The majority of people will say that it is just an informative piece of news and it does not affect them in any way.

What I think it is much more than an informative story because it may have affected them in an indirect way, as they are now aware that there are people out there who are mocking others tragedies and those who read this news story would subconsciously take this into consideration when there are informing others of their problems. The neighbourhood of these group of people who are living there is definitely been effected when the read this news.

News generally falls into one of three categories, positive news, negative news such as a women dying unexpectedly while visiting gym (refer to image 3) and finally informative news which people may not see much particular interest in, though, they still required to be informed just to know what is happening around them, Brexit is one of the biggest examples for this category (refer to image 4). Jeremy Iggers (2018: 8) backs up what I said, the reason why journalism is surviving it is that of the public, therefore, the public needs journalism to know themselves and what interests them. I believe news is very necessary in modern times and journalists being at the forefront of the news industry are also a necessity.

·      Conclusion:

In conclusion, the journalists have a strong voice on behalf the people and because of that they need always to maintain their work ethics thus they can defend their actions in the public interest according to Stuart Allan (2009: np) there are two vital value journalistic morals, one, is always telling the truth, too, act in the public interest and their good. Furthermore, always knowing how much do you have freedom of expression and lawyer refer to a lawyer so you can know how much you can push.

Image 1.

Image 2.

Image 3.

Image 4.

Table number one.

Table number two.

Table number three.

Diagram one.

Bibliography.

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