Making journalists not to attack regular persons

On September 5 there was the second meeting of the media and NGO lawyers  with the head of the media law research group Timur Erdzhanov who presented his first conclusions and proposals. During the friendly discussion, I said that this time the mountain has brought forth not even a mouse, but a rat that would bite all of us to death and  Mr. Erdzhanov accused me of lying, Igor Nevolin stood up for me, everyone demanded to list the countries where ministries of information and law about the media exist, there were accusations of manipulating facts, demands to formulate the notions of public figures and private life ... So it was far from boring.

As per my understanding officials turned againsts the Ministry of Information for the last year's amendments that lifted a number of prohibitions on the publication of photographs and let journalists took too much for granted. Now the obedient ministry wants to win back and to ban some verbal information at at the same time. But the minister personally and publicly declared that there would not be any more amendments to the law on mass media, and a fundamentally new media law that is worthy to be called a the 21st century legal act would come soon. The new epoch-making document must be preceded by research. And here is the right group of theoretical researchers who have not finished their work yet, but vocalized their recommendations already. And I believe that all recommendations (except for two) are aimed to fulfill the officials' desires though Mr.Erdzhanov believe that the recommendations are to protect private life of regular persons.

To separate regular persons from not ordinry ones, the researhes, whose work is funded by state order of the ministry, recommend introducing the concept of "public figure". Such figures can be criticized, their incomes and activities can be reported, as for the others – no private information can be reported without their documented permission. What are the parameters to define a public figure? It is clear that a minister is public figure, it is understandable that akim (mayor) is considered to be a public fugure, but what about the chairman of housing and communal services or an assistant of a deputy head of a department of something, whom media had never written a word before and suddenly began to criticize? Again, everyone knows that our corrupt officials convey “hard-earned” assets to their relatives. It turns out to be that a mother-in-law of some minister that suddenly became a rich woman is an ordinary person and journalists cannot explore the sources of her wealth without being ounished for that.

The reasearches are so concerned about privacy of regular persons that they are eager not ust to ban publications on this topic, but to exclude even the very possibility of such publications. For the unbelievers I quote: "- to exclude the possibility of publishing data on the private lives of persons who are not public figures." I wonder how? Do they mean to introduce an editorial rule to attach a written permission for publication even if a journalists writes about an amateur gardener?

According to the head of the reasearch, public or private status of a person will be defined in court. A notion of “journalistic investigation” will be introduced into the law to give journalists an opportunty to explore the sourses of sudden wealth of officials’s mothers-in-law and other relatives and to prevent media from compalining on blocking their fight against corruption.

Actually, there are a lot of things written by other researches about the journalistic investigation and even investigative journalism. It means a genre, a special series of publications, and an analytical article that have specific features. What exectly did the research group propose to introduce into the law? And who will determine whether a published article is a part of the investigation or as a one-time report? Will it be determined by courts where every judge has about 300 cases to consider per month.

Besides that the researches propose to grant regular persons the right to demand a “preventive prohoibition to dissiminate information related to them” for journalists could not violate the sacred privacy of individuals. That would be very convenient for regular relatives of public figures who decide to visit a casino or purchase a yacht. It is not clear how a person can apply for a ban to dissiminate information about thing he/she has not done yet? Maybe such persons will have evidence of the intentions of the villain-journalist? And what is such if  information is related to such a regular person indirectly? This will also be decided by a court.

In general, this section of the proposals is called "Proposals in the field of establishing a more precise balance between the right to disseminate information and the inviolability of privacy." Then a law-creating question emerges: what is private life? “There is no definition of this concept in the international legislation”, - T. Erdzhanov asserts, and we agree with him. There is no definition, but there is a responsibility for violating it, so the only thing our judges can follow is the scientific and practical commentary of the Constitution of the Republic of Kazakhstan issued by the Constitutional Council of the Republic of Kazakhstan. It says in particlular: "Privacy, personal and family secrets are protected by the Constitution and laws of the Republic of Kazakhstan. information about a person, giving an assessment of his character, appearance, health, material condition, family status, lifestyle, individual facts of the biography are subjects to such protection. " That’s it ...

Besides I would like to say more about the right to be forgotten - a beautiful phrase from international documents that researchers formalized in the recommendation "to consolidate the right of citizens to demand  media and owners of Internet resources to delete or alter information concerning them with the possibility of apply for lelag protection".

All recommnedationscannot be commented in one article. In general, I'm afraid that, judging by all the above, it will take years to develop the promised media law that is to be worthy to be called a legal act of the 21st century and in the short term we will get just other modest "additions and amendments to the legislation on information issues."