(by Federica De Stefani, lawyer and head of Aidr Lombardy Region) Journalistic activity and the exercise of the right to report are again at the center of a provision by the Privacy Guarantor after a news story concerning the murder of a 2-year-old girl.
Some newspapers reported the news using the photo of the minor taken from the social networks of the mother, the main suspect in the murder.
Before addressing issues relating to the right to press, including judicial ones, still today rather delicate aspects that to varying degrees influence and condition the work of the journalist, it is necessary to make some reflections on the tools that are used in the exercise of the profession.
Technology has undoubtedly affected the ways in which journalistic activity is carried out and it is precisely for this reason that the web, as a whole, requires the use of various kinds of measures and precautions.
There is no instruction booklet or general code that regulates, from the legal side, the functioning of the Network and so it is necessary to know in a specific way the general rules that can also be applied to the online world and the rules that regulate the functioning of that individual. instrument referred to.
Can, for example, as in the case that gave rise to the new intervention of the Guarantor, photos published on social networks be extracted? Can personal information be extracted from the same social networks that are used to draft the news article? What is the insurmountable limit beyond which you cannot go?
The statement of the Guarantor reads verbatim "In many cases, media and online newspapers have published, in addition to several unencrypted photographs of the child, numerous details relating to the personal events and psychological state of the mother, indicated as presumed responsible for the death, verbatim reporting thoughts and comments taken from the Facebook profile of the woman, as well as photographs of herself together with her two other children, whose faces - albeit pixelated - are in fact recognizable.
The information and images described are in clear contrast with the provisions of the privacy legislation and the ethical rules relating to journalistic activity, which - while safeguarding the right / duty to inform the community about facts of public interest - prescribe to the operators of the information to refrain from publishing details relating to the private sphere of the person and prescribe, also through reference to the Treviso Charter, particular and reinforced guarantees for the protection of minors involved in news events ".
On the one hand, therefore, the reference to the right to press, in the double dimension of right and duty to information on facts of public interest, on the other hand the express reference to the ethical rules, which provide for particular guarantees for minors.
The ethical rules relating to the processing of personal data in the exercise of journalistic activity, published in the Official Gazette no. 3 of 4 January 2019, consist of a body of 13 articles that provide specific information on the methods of processing personal data in line with the principles set out by the GDPR.
In particular, art. 7, in addition to expressly providing for a ban on providing details capable of identifying the minor (such as the photos in the case de quo, albeit with the use of the pixelation technique) in paragraph 3 expressly states "The minor's right to privacy must always be considered as primary with respect to the right of criticism and news; if, however, for reasons of significant public interest and without prejudice to the limits of the law, the journalist decides to disseminate news or images concerning minors, he / she will have to take responsibility for assessing whether the publication is really in the objective interest of the minor, according to the principles and limits established by the “Treviso Charter".
It follows, therefore, that the right to privacy of the minor involved in judicial news events must always be considered prevailing over the right of the news and therefore represents an insurmountable limit for the journalist who deals with this type of journalism.
The Guarantor had already intervened on this point several times, reiterating each time the need to consider the confidentiality of the minor as prevalent
Thus, just to name one, the news story concerning a parent (public figure) cannot be integrated with the data of the children of the same, who are minors, even if these data are already available online as published. on their social profiles by the parent.
The data of minors, although already present online, must not be taken back by virtue of the principle according to which the prevalence of the right to privacy of the minor over the right of criticism and news must be recognized.
The current regulations in force require the journalist to comply with the essentiality of the information in dealing with facts of public interest, even when relating to public figures. (Provision of 24 June 2020)
In conclusion, therefore, one can only hope for greater attention also to rules, the deontological ones, which in such a frenetic information society, now strongly oriented towards mobile journalism and the use of digital, represent a fundamental pillar from which it is impossible. regardless.