4.2 Investigative Journalism and Right to Privacy

The watchdog's craft: investigative journalism — the sustained, document-and-source-based exposure of concealed wrongdoing (corruption, abuse, the powerful's secrets): the fourth estate's highest service and its greatest legal risk. The tension's anatomy (privacy vs. the public interest): The subject's privacy (Article 28): the private-facts zone — health, family, sexuality, finances — protected against publication; the public figure's diminished but not extinguished privacy — the official's public conduct is fair ground; the official's home life mostly is not; The newsworthiness test: the publication justified where the information's public importance genuinely outweighs the privacy invasion — the test's honesty: newsworthiness is a reason, not a magic word; The newsgathering's own limits: the methods — secret recording, telephoto surveillance, pretext interviews, the leaked private documents — the Individual Privacy Act 2074's application to the gathering (not only the publication); the illegality of the method contaminates the story's fruits; The accountability interface: the exposé of wrongdoing serves the public interest (the RTI's spirit, Unit 2.3) — the balance: investigate the office, not the person; the public's need, not the audience's appetite. The working rules (the exam's list): verification before exposure; the subject's response sought (the right of reply as the investigation's discipline); the minimal-necessary intrusion (the proportionality of Unit 2.5 applied to newsgathering); the vulnerable's protection (minors, victims) regardless of the story's value.