A CASE AGAINST PRIVACY LEGISLATION FROM THE PERSPECTIVE OF THE REGIONAL PRESS

The paper sets out the reasons for the opposition of the Guild of British Newspaper Editors to the imposition of privacy legislation. In doing so, it first examines five recent stories arguing that the publication of each in the press can be justified as being in the public interest. It then considers the effect of any new privacy legislation which would in the view of the Guild not only probably fail to prevent stories from being released but also be damaging to the working of an open society.