What Right To Privacy Do You Have In An Age Of User-Generated Media?

from the not-very-much dept

Dave writes in to point to a ruling by the "Press Complaints Commission" in the UK, saying that the media needs to be careful to respect individual's privacy rights in making use of user-generated media. As we all know, many news organizations have increasingly learned to leverage the fact that so many people are carrying around mobile phones that can take photos and record video. When news stories break, the news organizations are more than willing to make use of this content to add value to the story -- as they should. However, what if the video is taken in private somewhere and reveals things it shouldn't? That was the case before the PCC, where a news organization had used a student's cameraphone video of an unruly classroom in a story. The school complained that no one had given consent to be filmed. The PCC noted that the story clearly was a matter of public interest, but that the people in the video should have been hidden, so as not to be as easily identified.

Of course, this sounds good in theory, but becomes very tricky in practice. In fact, this story is similar to one a few years ago, where a school punished the students for filming an angry outburst by a teacher, rather than blaming the teacher for the outburst. The efforts to hide these videos often comes across more as a way to coverup the very problem that resulted in the filming in the first place. It's like blaming a whistle blower. At the same time, it's ridiculous to think that such content can be blocked. Sure, they can tell "the media" that it can't use that kind of content, but that won't stop the content from showing up on YouTube anyway. In fact, this ruling makes it harder for the "official" media to report on certain stories, while guaranteeing that others will do so instead.

11 Comments | Leave a Comment..