The Ethics of Freedom of the Press

On the face of it, this is a non-issue in the way that only an aspect of Constitutional Law can be. The Right to Freedom of the Press cannot be abridged in any fashion anywhere in the United States, and probably shouldn’t be. Certainly, there don’t appear to be any historical examples of government-sponsored censorship, or government controlled media, that turned out to be a good thing. But in a world where almost any information that is released in any fashion can be made accessible to anyone with a computer in a matter of seconds, the question becomes more one of ethics than law anyway. I thought we should take a closer look…

To begin with, despite the things that some people like to claim on the Internet, you can’t really say or print anything you want. The First Amendment protections were never intended to shield anyone from the consequences of actual crimes or of tortious acts. Claiming that an object you are selling is valuable when it isn’t is still fraud, and claiming that someone has defrauded you when they haven’t is still slander, or libel if you publish it. Similarly, the use or distribution of material somebody else wrote, drew, photographed, filmed or otherwise created without their permission is a copyright violation, and generally regarded as theft. But what about a case where there is no law preventing the use of some material, and no practical chance of a civil suit, but the possibility still exists of causing harm – physical, monetary or emotional – to another party?

Consider, if you will, any of the cases where crime scene photos, or pictures taken after an automobile accident, have been leaked or sold and then posted online. There was another one of these in Montana this past week, but you can find similar examples in California and several other states. Depending on the jurisdiction and the appropriate state law, there may or may not be any legal prohibition against releasing these images to the public, or distributing them on the air or over the Internet. One could argue that the people who run television stations and news websites have a fiduciary responsibility to generate revenue for their owners, and that if displaying legally-obtained images increases viewership or site traffic they have a duty to display those images. One could also argue that as journalists they have a duty to inform the public of newsworthy events occurring in their community, even if those events are tragic. But I personally would not want to be the one assigned to explain those principles to a grieving family who had first learned of the loss of a loved one when they saw the footage on the 6:00 news…

I’m quite sure I don’t need to tell anyone reading this post (assuming I have readers) how problematic it would be to have officials at any level of government – or worse, private citizens with “influence” over those officials – decide what information should be available to the public. The potential for abuse in product liability cases alone would be monumental. But at the same time, relying on the conscience, discretion or human decency of those managers in charge of the news media does not appear to be working. All of which brings me to the question:

At what point does the right of the public to know about the conditions, hazards, risks, or misfortunes befalling their community outweigh the right of family, friends, or victims of a tragedy to privacy? Does our answer change depending on how much time has passed since the tragic events, or on how much of a threat the underlying cause of that tragedy poses to the public at large? And even assuming that it was possible to identify such a point, can we trust anyone outside of the media companies themselves to make such a judgement? Or are should we just leave those laws as they stand and hope for the best?

It’s worth thinking about…

Parking Magic

Did you ever find yourself facing the unappealing choice of either risking a ticket because you don’t have any change to feed a parking meter, or not being able to park and having to go somewhere else? How about those occasions when you need to be somewhere for a few hours and the only space available has a 30-minute limit, forcing you to keep running out to feed the meter? Well, if a new development going on in Chicago starts catching on in other cities, these problems may soon become a thing of the part – although I won’t make book on a new set of problems failing to appear soon thereafter…

According to a story being reported in the Chicago Tribune this week, the city has been testing an electronic parking system that allows you to purchase parking time electronically from a device mounted on your dashboard. Plans are already underway to expand the system and adopt new technologies that will allow you to purchase your parking minutes directly from your cell phone – and buy more minutes if you should find that your virtual meter is about to run out and you need more time to complete whatever errand you’re on. As usual, this idea has both positive and negative aspects…

On the one hand, feeding coinage into a parking meter is a pain, particularly when the amount you’re being charged for the space is as high as it is in parts of Chicago, Los Angeles, or any other large city. Consider that if parking is $2 per hour (not unusual these days) you will need 8 quarters per hour, or 64 of them (nearly two rolls of quarters) for a day at work. Even at 75 cents per hour I was spending $3 or $3.50 per day to park in Santa Monica the last time I worked there, which meant three rolls of quarters every two weeks – not a very appealing choice, but still preferable to the $175 that the parking lot under our office building would have charged me for a month of non-reserved parking. I’d probably have preferred an electronic system to taking $60 in quarters out of the bank each month…

On the downside, this system not only requires the user to have a higher level of technology available in order to park, it eliminates any practical considerations for not raising the cost of parking in the city. If your parking enforcement personnel no longer have to empty parking meters – or even walk a beat to write parking tickets – but can handle all of the functions of their jobs from a desk somewhere, not only is it much easier to enforce parking laws, it’s much easier to keep increasing the cost per hour. In fact, this would really require no effort at all…

In the long run, of course, it really doesn’t matter what we think of such developments; cities will continue raising parking rates because they need the money – and because they can. Eventually, the simple pole-mounted coin box will become obsolete, simply because it will not be possible for anyone to carry enough small change around with them to buy enough time for even a short errand, let alone a day at work. At that point a system that accepts credit cards, debit cards, and electronic payments by cell phone or over the Internet (for as long as there is any difference between those functions) is probably a good thing. A much more serious issue is that those electronic purchases can be traced – in fact, they have to be traced for billing purposes…

On-street parking will probably always be the low-cost alternative to expensive parking lots, and it may remain more convenient than having to drive off and find space in a lot somewhere. But the idea that one day soon anyone who wants to find out will be able to learn exactly where you park your car everyday has some very disturbing implications…

On The Slope

There was an interesting story in the Los Angeles Times this week about a group of paparazzi who ran afoul of the local surfers in Malibu and got the crap beaten out of them. Anyone who grew up in LA should already be familiar with the concept of “Locals Only,” and in fact anyone who has spent more than a few days in the area has probably seen some form of sign, bumper sticker, or graffiti that carries this theme. For the most part, surfers just want to surf, and if someone who isn’t strictly “local” shows up and stays out of their way, minds his or her own business, and just surfs and goes home, they will leave him or her alone. A large group of non-local surfers may attract attention, but again, as long as they just want to catch a few waves and stay out of trouble, they generally won’t find any…

Problems with beach turf tend to occur when a group of tourists (and in this context, “tourist” may mean someone from five miles down the coast or three miles inland) insist on setting up an elaborate base camp taking up half the beach, creating a huge amount of mess and noise, and interfering with the local people who just want to surf. It’s true that no one owns the beach, let alone the surf, but people coming into your space and demanding that you respect their “rights” to be there while refusing to respect yours is not a scenario that is going to end well anywhere people are people. What makes this week’s case so special, and the reason it enters the purview of this blog, is that the crowd in question were not just fun-loving tourists; they were professional stalkers armed with camera equipment and out to make a fast buck…

Now, as you might imagine, I’m in favor of free speech, and of freedom of the press. Sometimes this means allowing people who you despise the chance to say their piece, and sometimes this means allowing idiots who just have to see “candid” pictures of their favorite celebrities to purchase trashy newspapers and magazines containing those images. Any law that infringes on those rights is generally a bad idea, if only because once you start limiting free speech you have stepped out onto the ultimate in slippery slopes and there can be no good that will come from it. But what can you do about people who will infringe upon your rights in order to exercise their own?

What generally happens is that when any industry begins to threaten the health, safety or standard of living of society as a whole, the government is forced to step in and pass laws regulating that industry. If the people who take pictures for the tabloid press are not willing to regulate themselves – and more to the point, are willing to risk the lives and safety of other drivers, risk the health and safety of their subjects, and totally disrupt the lives of innocent bystanders in pursuit of their business – then it becomes the duty of the relevant governments to impose regulation on them. The City of Malibu is already preparing local ordinances to deal with the situation, and the County may follow suit…

The paparazzi will undoubtedly challenge those laws on the basis of 1st Amendment rights, but I’ve read the Bill of Rights, and there isn’t anything in it about having the right to risk the lives and safety of others, risk the health and safety of photographic subjects, and totally disrupt the lives of innocent bystanders in pursuit of one’s business. The fact is that just like any other industry that has the potential to negatively impact the public good, these people (and the publications that purchase their pictures) have the simple choice of regulating themselves, or having the government do it for them. I don’t know what level of decorum should be required of this industry under the law, but just as a general rule, if something you are doing as part of your business is causing passers-by to assault you and destroy your equipment, you need to rethink your business model…