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Re: Human Rights Act

Date: Sat, 22 Feb 2003 07:56:36 +0000
From: "L. Bird" <pkeets@hotmail.com>

This seems to be in compliance with the PCC code.  However, my point it that
the code has failed to cover the international issue.  I'm hoping for some
suggestions here as to what the code committee might do to prevent this
happening to other targets in the future.  International agreements?
Imposing some liability for international damage on the UK media?  Anything?
Nations tend to like to preserve their own sovereignty. I think you're spitting into the wind without some kind of international enforcement authority, and the UN doesn't give me much confidence in that working. trying to get a network of treaties going where a list of countries pledges to honor the lawsuits(?) of each others' citizens against each others' media seems too baroque to consider, too.

I don't know that this is strictly true. If [British media] published stories that
were open to incorrect interpretation (or worse, implied something
incorrect), then they started it and it's their fault.
It's nearly impossible to print something that is not _somehow_ open to incorrect interpretation, (as this dialogue is proving).

This might be
difficult to argue in court, but it's still a moral wrong, especially when
it leads to irrevocable damages.
If you want to tilt at something that's legal but immoral, get back to me when you take aim at the income tax.

 >>This is dangerous.  I hate to mention such things (knock on wood), lest
 >>saying it could somehow make it come true, but Pete could be murdered for

this tomorrow.

That's *no one's* fault but the perpetrator.

By perpetrator, I gather you mean Pete and not some particular newspaper?
Here's that misinterpretation we were discussing four paragraphs ago. By "perpetrator" I meant the person who commits the murder.

 >>The media published Pete's photo widely and gave enough

information that his house would be easy to locate.

And that's supposed to be enough to make them liable for thousands?
millions? of pounds. No.

If the house burns due to arson within the next few months, then it might be
worth investigating a possible connection.
And if that investigation showed that the arsonist got Pete's adress from a British tabloid, then what? I'm afraid to guess anything at this point.

I'm talking about identifying
problems when we first see the possibility.  Princess Diana's death was
there to read in the cards for years before it actually happened.  The 9/11
disaster was there in the cards to read.  The law is required to wait for
the smoking gun, but I think we have a moral obligation to look for these
things before they happen and try to provide a remedy.
This is looking at things in reverse. ANYthing that actually happens can be seen to have traceable clues, in retrospect. But there are hundreds or thousands of everyday occurrences that COULD lead to some dire consequence but don't. Lets get back to "clear and present danger" rather than stifling a free press because one or two headcases might take things the wrong way.

 >_What_ threat?  There IS no threat in reality, just the possibility of one.

  And even if someone DID threaten him, again that is the perpetrator's
fault, not the media that did no more than publish facts.

How can you say something like this is the perpetrator's fault?
Because by "the perpetrator" I don't mean Pete but the vigilante who commits a crime against Pete.

The threat against Pete is implicit in the way sex offenders are treated in
the UK (and in the US, too).  There was a mob waiting for Gary Glitter when
he was released from prison, and the police had to take steps to get him out
safely.  If there had been no publicity about the case, how likely would it
have been that the mob was waiting?
I don't think I'd want to live in a society with the controls in place that it would take to NOT have had publicity about that. The fault lies in people with too much time and not enough brains, not in a free (and factual) press.

I'm not talking about lawsuits at all here, but about changing the PCC code
or other practices in the UK to prevent 1) international damage to someone's
reputation that can't be remedied by actions within the UK and 2) to prevent
possible danger to Pete, which can be predicted by similar cases.
OK. But I think 1) faces a morass of crosscurrents as before, and 2) would impose more harm than it would solve, cf. "Prior restraint".

I'll refer to the TV show again with the secret admirer.  That wasn't a
falsehood they publicized, but the jury found them directly responsible in a
wrongful death suit because the presentation was inflammatory.
And even that was preferable to having the government terminate the Jenny Jones show long before the show in question occurred, because it _might_ lead to a crime.

Cheers,
--
Alan
"That's unbelievable, if that's true"
-- Howard Stern, 5/25/00