Curb the press? Stop the presses?

National Review, Oct 13, 1997 by William F. Buckley, Jr.

A British journalist and historian of great eminence has shared with me (we are old friends) letters he has sent to editors and proprietors of British newspapers pressing his case for a privacy law that would serve as a durable monument to the experience of Princess Diana. "This morning the Daily Mail which I have long taken, admired, and frequently written for printed one of the most repellent front pages I have ever seen on a British newspaper, with a huge caption:

CHARLES WEEPS BITTER TEARS OF GUILT

"Not only was it hitting, most unfairly, at an unhappy man when he is thoroughly down, but in making such deplorable supposition it was also extremely bad journalism; how can your journalists possibly have known what the sentiments of a weeping Prince actually were?

Several American public figures have expostulated to the same end: that something should be done to enforce privacy laws. These laws, fancied or implied, have after all been casting a very wide net. Privacy has been judged to give the mother exclusive right over the fetus, the man over his extra-marital life, the homosexual over his living arrangements. But privacys carapace doesnt by any means shield everyones privacy. The morning paper carries a story of five Jewish freshmen prepared to sue Yale University for requiring them to live in unisex dorms. And of course the Princess Diana matter has raised questions about a) whether the protections even of public figures should be increased, and b) is this possible, in the American situation, under the First Amendment.

Many who have given up on anti-pornography laws, the journalist James Jackson Kilpatrick conspicuous among them, have done so pleading a simple but insurmountable problem that the line cant be drawn that, ultimately, distinguishes between Ulysses and Hustler. Consider an existing mini-point. Concerning Princess Diana, the consensus among journalists is that no photograph taken during the critical moments should be published. But it is said that the French police have a picture that shows her with left hand raised to shield her face. Deduction: That hand could not have been raised except to give protection from a photographer traveling parallel to Diana. The implications of this that the paparazzo was speeding in on his motorcycle abreast of the Mercedes suggests hot pursuit at a level clearly threatening not only to privacy, but to life and limb. If such a photograph exists, can we reasonably expect editors to refuse to publish it? Suppose there is a photo of the princess lying wounded while a photographer is firing away at one side?

Gary Hart, contending for the presidential nomination, taunts the press to document any moral delinquency in his behavior and a few days later consorts with a lady of ostensibly irregular virtue, is photographed, and loses what appeared to be a winning primary series. The defense (Free Press even for paparazzi) pleads that whatever privacy rights Sen. Hart had were effectively forfeited when he issued his challenge. But we learned that the Miami Herald, even before the challenge was made, had decided to stalk the senator and had a photographer in place outside his house in Washington. Would such a law as we seek distinguish between the Miami Heralds photographer and another sent in after the challenge? How exactly would one phrase that law?

My British correspondent urges the traditional sanction collective defense. He writes to one paper, for which he had begun a book review, and advises the editor that he will not complete his task or any other, so long as the paper is owned by the same corporation that owns a tabloid that regularly transgresses on a defensible code. Mrs. Ramsey, the mother of the murdered 6-year old, urges, as others do, boycotts of The Globe and The Star and other such journals. But these are sold mostly at counters of supermarkets where the traffic is not made up of the kind of people who are readily mobilized for boycotts in pursuit of an ideal. The same woman who will decide not to vote for Sen. Hart because he is a philanderer is by no means committed not to buy a copy of a paper that proves him to be one.

Are the complications indeed insuperable? My own guess is that reform would need to begin at the top. "Obviously any privacy law would need sharp teeth, my correspondent writes in his letter to the editor of the (London) Times. "May I remind your readers that in March 1963, under Harold Macmillan, two prominent journalists were sent to prison for six months for contempt of court? Macmillans comment on the ensuing howl is perhaps relevant today: The Press represented them as martyrs, but the man in the street was more skeptical.