Whose life is it anyway?

摘要

"I'm with you on a free press, it's the newspapers I can't stand," says a character in Tom Stoppard's play, Night and Day. Britain's judges appear to agree: they seem bent on curbing the freedom of the press to protect individuals' privacy. For a nation of secretive people, Britain is curiously casual about privacy. Its newspapers intrude on the lives of their subjects, celebrated or obscure, more than those in any other country. That is partly because the newspaper business, with ten national daily titles fighting for a shrinking market, is viciously competitive. But it is also because governments have been unwilling to take on the press and legislate, in the way that most other rich countries have, to protect the privacy of individuals.