Privacy And Respect! What the media law says?

When one of the most famous Canadian musicians Celine Dion’s husband Rene Angelil passed away in 2016, all sorts of international journalist called her phone wanted to interview her about Rene Angelil’s demise.

But the head of the bereaved family issued a statement that acknowledged the public sympathy and pleaded for privacy and respect while the family mourned the dead.

Celine Dion’s family request for privacy and respect, in fact prevented the media and the general public from making snoopy statements about the late music producer and manager Rene Angelil and his family, nobody was head defaming the singer and her dead husband.

What is shameful now in Ghana is the rate at which some self-acclaimed pastors, reverend ministers, bishops and prophets are snooping, defaming the dead and the living every single day without prosecution.

If late deputy finance minister John Kumah was poisoned, which he was not, does the media law permit the producer and the editor of the radio station which first interviewed Nigel Gaisie to broadcast a death prophecy and snoopy story about the bereaved?

WHAT IS DEFAMATION?
Any statement or act that attacks the good reputation of a person can be said to be defamatory, says the Oxford Dictionary and Thesaurus of Current English.

The McNae’s Essential Law for Journalists also explains that defamatory statements are those published or spoken which affects the reputation of a person, company or organization.

A statement about a person is defamatory if it seriously affects his/her reputation by exposing him/her to hatred, ridicule or contempt or causing him/her to be shunned or avoided.

Or lowering him/her in the estimation of right-thinking members of society generally; disparaging the person in his/her business, trade, and office of profession.

CASE STUDY
Singer-songwriter Robbie Williams won ‘substantial’ damages from publisher Northern and Shell in 2005 after the magazine Star and Hot Star ran stories alleging that he had omitted from forth coming authorized biography details of an alleged sexual encounter with a man in the lavatories of a club in Manchester and that, by disclosing details of his female conquests but not mentioning this episode, he was concealing his true sexuality. But the allegations were completely false-the publisher apologized, and paid damages and the singer’s costs [Robert Peter William v Northern and Shell Plc, statement in High Court, December 6, 2005.

WHAT IS A SNOOPY STORY?
A snoopy story can simply be defined as profiting from stolen information about a person’s health from a family home/health facility for publication either to defame him or use as a sales lead that violates the privacy of the person.

In other words, gossiping/ buying medical information about a person from a home/health facility to use for prophetic/political propaganda as Nigel Gaisie and the media did was “a massive criminal scheme that violated the privacy of John Kumah.

The goal as it has been explained earlier on was to defame late John Kumah and the wife, ridicule to be avoided in the estimation of right thinking Ghanaians that he was a bad person against his reputation.

CASE STUDY 1
In August 2016, an Ontario Court Judge convicted and fined two former investment dealers who bought stolen medical information to use as sales leads. A former branch manager at Knowledge First Financial Inc., was fined 45,000 dollars, placed on probation for two years and ordered to serve 300 hours of community service for her role in the snooping plot. She was also banned from practicing in the financial services industry for at least two years the court ruled.

Her co-accused, who was an assistant manager with CST Consultants Inc., was given the same sentence with lower fine -3,000 dollars and 150 hours community service due to his age and financial standing, the judge ruled.

CASE STUDY 2
Five people were convicted by an Ontario Court of their involvement in a snooping for-profit scheme, which affected at least 14,000 maternity patients at Rouge Valley Health System hospitals. The huge privacy breach was announced by the health provider in 2014, after an internal investigation prompted two employees to admit they had snooped into patients medical records.

In June, two others involved in the scheme –Esther Cruz and Nellie Acar- were sentenced to three months’ house arrest, two years’ probation and 340 hours of community service.

Late John Kumah is no more with some of the statements and publications being made about him found to be untrue.

It is sad to observe that the massive criminal scheme that was used against other statesmen is being used for everyone therefore the need to raise awareness and crack the whip thereafter.

Publishing a snoopy story is criminal and the media law does not permit that it should be made clear.

By: Stephen A.Quaye, Toronto-Canada.