Confidentiality
Confidentiality within Journalism depends completely on the type of secret information in question.
A person is in breach of confidence if they pass on information that:
-Has the necessary quality of confidence i.e the information was important and not already known
-There was no permission to pass on the information
-Was provided in circumstances imposing an obligation i.e a conversation between a doctor and patient
-Detriment is likely to be caused to the person who gave in the information (definition of detriment is basically
Privacy.
The Humans Rights Act, Section 8, tells us all that we need to know about privacy when reporting.
Privacy is all about 'family life' i.e tabloid & celebrity journalism, where family/personal information is printed about anyone celebrity or not.
The defence against this is of course an injunction which is easy to obtain as the claimant will say there is a danger of a crime happening.
The benefit of an injunction is that an injunction against one media organisation, is an injunction against all publishers. People with something to hide (most celebrities!!) will often opt for an injunction in an attempt to cover up their secrets as they hope that the legal cloud will cover over the actual main point of the articles they have got an injunction against.
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