From today’s Irish Independent Politicians, not public, want laws on privacy

Politicians are ‘crusading’ for stricter privacy laws despite just one-in-five formal complaints coming from the public. A survey of Irish journalism reveals that two thirds of privacy complaints against newspapers and broadcasters come from public figures, particularly politicians, with only one fifth from private citizens. …

From today’s Irish Times Privacy issue tops media complaints list, study shows

News reporting in the Irish media is virtually free of gratuitous racism, a symposium on ethics and journalism heard yesterday. Journalist Dr Simon Bourke told the conference at Dublin City University that no complaint of racism had ever been upheld by the Press Council or Broadcasting Complaints Commission … Dr Bourke presented to yesterday’s meeting his analysis of ethical controversies involving the media since 1973. Allegations of invasion of privacy emerged as the single largest issue, accounting for 71 of the 140 cases identified. …

From today’s Irish Times ‘We know dirt sells,’ says owner of photo agency

“We just want to make as much money as possible, we know dirt sells,” Ray Senior, owner of photo agency VIP Ireland, told the symposium. His agency pursues photographs of celebrities.

From the DCU news website yesterday Ethics and Journalism – symposium hosted by DCU School of Communications

DCU’s School of Communications today hosted a symposium on the topic of ‘Ethics and Journalism’ which was attended by academics as well as print and broadcast journalists. … Simon Bourke, the author of ‘Taking the free-speech temperature: Irish libel law and newspaper journalism‘, has just completed his PhD on ‘Ethical trends in Irish journalism, 1973 to 2008’. The findings of his research showed the following:

– Historically, a large majority of complaints of ‘unethical journalism’ in all forums had no identifiable ethical basis. …

– Of complaints with an arguably ethical basis, invasion of privacy (54%) and intrusion upon grief (28%) and conflict of interest (7%) formed the bulk. …

– The evidence suggests that the emphasis on privacy issues in the public discourse on journalistic ethics is being led by public figures and, particularly, by politicians. Two-thirds of invasion of privacy complaints in all forums were from public figures. One-third came from private citizens, and only a fifth (21%) actually concerned private citizens. …