Balance and Adjustment are what the Reporters should do

出自香港新聞網 - 樹仁新傳系學生實習習作

Balance and Adjustment are what the Reporters should do 27-9-2006 00:55 045044 陳靜雯 CHAN, CHING MAN

After the dressing room photo of Gillian Chung is posted on Easyfinder, “Legislating the Privacy” has became a controversy topic among the Hong Kong people.

Our schools, Hong Kong Shue Yan College, has catch up with this trend, being another stage for this topic, invited Miss Woo Lai Wan, the chairperson of Hong Kong Journalist Association and Mr Gilbert Mo, a famous lawyer and a draftsman of the Department of Justice to came and given a talk about “Law and Privacy” for the students.

During the assembly, Mr Mo had introduced several laws which are related to privacy and freedom of speech and press. He used the Basic Law, the constitution, also the Human Right Treaties to prove that the freedom of speech and press in Hong Kong is being protected. On the other sides, Mr Mo using the same evidences to tell us the privacy of Hong Kong people is being protected. The conclusion is that “the reporters have their right to report the true; the citizens have their right to protect their own privacy”. As a legislation organization, it is hard to stand on either one side. Moreover, privacy is something intangible, involved personal subjectivity and hard to define, therefore it is difficult for them to legislate a law for protecting the people privacy from media.

Miss Woo was totally agreed to Mr Mo above speaking, and reminded us that “Reporter not only a reporter, he is also a human, a citizen, he still has the responsibility to observe the law, could not using the public interest as a shield, then abusing the power and behaving unscrupulously”. Reporters should have their own specialized conduct and morality to decide which reports are necessary and which are not, also they have to do the adjustment and get the balance between public interest and privacy.