Pregnancy and Privacy
This week's experience in terms of the media and Emily's pregnancy is a good example to look at from the perspective of privacy legislation.
On Monday I went to the Birmingham's Womens Hospital (previously known as the Maternity Hospital) with Emily to look at the 12 week scans of her pregnancy.
The day afterwards I had a tweet sent to me offering congratulations. On Saturday a journalist from the Sunday Mercury came to ask questions about the pregnancy.
Today it was the front page story of the Mercury and will be in the nationals tomorrow (some of them).
Now the privacy question is whether the law should be such that the journalists should be imprisoned for reporting this. I accept that it is inconvenient for the story to be reported. We had only told our daughter (Isobel) on Friday. Hence to have it published in a newpaper on Sunday is a bit earlier than we would have wished.
However, there is a real danger in controlling what truth is told by the media. I accept that the media should not be allowed to lie about people without regulation. However, there are lots of dangers in preventing them from telling the truth (I have a lot of examples).
From our personal viewpoint it was an irritating day where we needed to accelerate telling people. However, did it really warrant imprisoning journalists. I don't think so. Over to Eady J.