Public service broadcasting and the law on freedom of information.

political analyst

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balen_Report

In the UK, some people requested copies of Malcolm Balen's report about BBC coverage of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict under the Freedom of Information Act 2000. The BBC rejected those requests on the grounds that the report was information that held by the BBC only for the purposes of journalism, art or literature and thus that the report was not subject to the Act.

Why would information that is held by a public service broadcaster solely for the purposes of journalism, art or literature be exempt from accessibility by the public under the law on freedom of information? Surely, the secrecy about the Balen report goes against the grain of what a public service broadcaster is supposed to stand for.

Peregrinus

The UK's Freedom of Information Act expressly provides that the BBC (along with other public broadcasters) is not covered in relation to information held for purposes of journalism, art or literature.

The esclusion of journalistic etc information from the FoI Act mirrors a provision in the Data Protection Act. Data processed for journalistic, etc, purposes is exempt from the data protection legislation. And you can see why this should be so — journalistic research and investigation would be seriously hampered if the subject of the investigation could demand access to the data held by the journalist, or demand that it be deleted, or if their consent had to be obtained to publish it.

The Data Protection Act, in turn, reflects a provision in the EU Directive 95/46/EC on data protection, which recognises that data protection rights have to be reconciled with the public interest in a free press. So a journalist doesn't need a person's consent to investigate their affairs or to publish information about them.

I think the exclusion of journalist information from the FoI Act goes along with this. There's not much point in excluding journalistic information from the Data Protection Act if people can simply have recourse to the Freedom of Information Act instated to scrutinise and expose the jouralistic investigations of public service broadcasters. Where would that leave the protection of journalistic sources, for instance?

There's also the consideration that there should be a level playing field between public and non-public broadcasters; the deliberations of ITV news or the Times newspaper into their own editorial polices and practices are not accessible, and neither should those of the BBC be. Key to the British understanding of public service broadcasting is that the journalistic activities of public service broadcasters shouldn't be constrained or influenced by their public service status.

Woodcutting

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122599744#Comment_122599744

How is a 'journalist' defined in this situation? . Today so many call them citizen journalists and as far as I know journalist is not a restricted title in Ireland.

Can anyone who wants to write/research claim this exemption?

Surely, if something is fact anyone can write it.

political analyst

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122599744#Comment_122599744

ITV is a commercially-funded public service broadcaster.

As for the BBC, publication of the Balen report could be done without revealing sources' identities. Surely, licence-feepayers have a right to know what goes on in a broadcaster that they fund, don't they?

Victor

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610654#Comment_122610654

"ITV is a commercially-funded public service broadcaster." Whatever about the broadcasting rules, STV Group plc and ITV plc are publicly-listed companies.

Peregrinus

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610408#Comment_122610408

"Journalist" isn't defined; the term isn't used. The word used is "journalism". The question of who is a journalist doesn't really arise, because we are only talking about information held by the BBC (and other public broadcasters). "Citizen journalists" and indeed private sector journalists generally aren't within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act and so don't need an exemption from it.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610654#Comment_122610654

ITV isn't publicly-owned or publicly-established and, as a result, isn't within the scope of the Freedom of Information Act.

As for the licence-fee payers having a right to know what goes on in the BBC, there's a tension between that ideal and the ideal thatthe BBC should be independent in its journalistic activities, and the latter consideration seems to have won out in this instance.

Woodcutting

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122610733#Comment_122610733

OK thanks. I though you mentioned Data Protection. What I meant to ask was in Ireland, are private sector journalists exempt from Data Protection. Sorry didn't make myself clear.

csirl

The UK Act isnt the same as the Irish FOI Act. Are there similar exemptions for RTE?

Woodcutting

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/122613494#Comment_122613494

I don't know re RTE.

Peregrinus

Data protection rules apply to everyone who holds data, private sector and public sector alike. But this case wasn't a data protection matter, but a freedom of information matter. FoI applies only to public sector entities.

The two are quite different. The focus of data protection rules, oversimplifying a bit, is to ensure that data held by others that is personal to you is not disclosed without your consent. The freeedom of information rules, by comparison, focus on ensuring that information held by public bodies is avialable to the public. You can see how there will often be a tension between those two objectives.