Public interest journalism and privacy in the ECtHR case law: a critical appraisal

This research focuses on the theory of social responsibility in forming public interest journalism which is currently considered to be a new and effective form of journalism, it has a predominant impact on public interest, common welfare, and serving humanity. This research is a scientific endeavor to understand the social responsibility theory of the media, and to what extent media organizations adhere to this responsibility, to create public interest journalism.
 The research highlights the important aspects of public interest journalism, including social responsibility, ethics, and professionalism, in addition to the role of investigative journalism in forming public interest journalism.
 The research aims to show the level of reliance on social responsibility, its relation, and its influence in forming public interest journalism. It identifies to what extent adherence to social responsibility, and its association, contributes to raising and instructing professional journalists to build public interest journalism. Moreover, illustrates to what degree social responsibility results in complying with the principles of work ethics in creating public interest journalism.
 The results of this study have shown that the theory of social responsibility has a positive impact on Furthermore, the results indicate that theory of social responsibility is a theory of reform and gives journalists the ability to work in terms of professionalism and to follow the ethical principles of media work to serve the public interest. This theory is not opposed to the positive values of societies, the values the media promulgates for is for bringing the world's nations closer, or the values that demand independence and an end to war (Cold War). This theory believes in the independence of rights and duties of the society and according to, the principles of this theory society should feel this freedom. This means that media institutions should be professional, and ethical, and show legal responsibility towards society.

Purpose: Driven by the question of how the concepts of public interest and public benefit differ, this paper delves into the Slovenian legal system. Through an in-depth analysis of legal concepts, national regulations, and case law from the Slovenian Constitutional Court and selected cases from the European Court of Human Rights, its aim is to illuminate the key differences between both terms. Ultimately, the paper seeks to establish fundamental guidelines for understanding the distinct meaning and application of each concept. Design/methodology/approach: The research is based on a content analysis research design, reviewing secondary literature sources. It employs qualitative methods by analysing the relevant theoretical points, rules, and constitutional case law in the Slovenian legal system, as well as selected European Court of Human Rights case law. The analysis focuses on identifying and extracting key theoretical arguments, legal definitions, and practical applications of both concepts. To distinguish between public benefit and public interest, the analysis adopts a comparative approach, examining how each concept is defined, applied, and balanced in different legal contexts. Additionally, synthesis is used to identify commonalities and divergences between different perspectives on these concepts. Finally, conclusions about the relationship between public benefit and public interest are drawn based on the analysed data. Findings: Public interest and public benefit are abstract concepts. The analysis of relevant Slovenian systemic regulations shows that the two are sometimes applied interchangeably. However, theory suggests that there are certain differences in terms of their tangibility and enforceability. Constitutional case law refers to both concepts in a general way without fully defining their content, yet it does not treat them as synonyms. Academic contribution to the field: Public interest and public benefit are central concepts of public administration science. Public interest is key in defining and shaping administrative relations decided in an administrative procedure. It represents the core value of the public sector, ensuring that its operations are legitimate. Public benefit, on the other hand, is the general benefit of an organised wider community, superior to the benefits of individuals and generally considered equivalent to substantive legality. As public and private interests collide, state intervention with appropriate regulation is necessary to protect the public benefit.Originality/significance/value: This research contributes to the understanding of the concepts of public interest and public benefit within the Slovenian legal system and is a novelty in the field as no such overview has been undertaken before. Its value lies in the analysis of Slovenian constitutional case law over the last twenty-two years and insights into European Court of Human Rights case law. The focus on European Court of Human Rights and Slovenian legislation and case law limits the generalisability of the findings to other contexts. This approach was chosen as much of the relevant legislation for this research is independent of EU influences. Nonetheless, being an EU member state, Slovenia’s legal framework shares some commonalities with other European systems. The added value of the analysis lies in its relevance for understanding how these concepts are treated in similar legal systems, offering valuable insights for comparative studies.

The case law of the European Court of Human Rights, which is recognized by the Ukrainian legislator as a source of land law, has not been sufficiently studied in the context of understanding the content of the concepts fundamental to this topic. The article analyzes various approaches to interpreting the category of “source of law,” including the formal legal, historical, ideological, and other approaches. It also examines the category of “source of land law” in the context of the ECtHR’s case law. Within the article, a source of land law is considered in its formal legal sense as an official form of external expression of generally binding rules of conduct that regulate land relations (relations concerning the possession, use, disposal, and protection of land) in Ukraine. An analysis of theoretical studies by Ukrainian scholars in the field of land law (including textbooks) was conducted to determine how they interpret the concept of “case law of the European Court of Human Rights.” It was found that most land law textbooks either examine the ECtHR’s case law as a source of land law indirectly, without analyzing or defining the relevant concepts, or do not consider it a source of land law at all. It was revealed that in many cases scholars understand the sources of land law primarily as normative legal acts such as the Constitution of Ukraine, laws, resolutions and decisions of the Cabinet of Ministers of Ukraine, decrees of the President of Ukraine, and so on, and do not regard the Court’s case law as a source of land law. The study also identified a lack of scientific consensus regarding the content of the category “ECtHR case law” among civil law scholars as well. In addition, the legislation itself was analyzed, and it also does not clearly define the concept of “ECtHR case law.” Based on the results of the analysis, a definition of the case law of the European Court of Human Rights is proposed as all judgments and decisions of the Court, regardless of whether they were delivered in cases against Ukraine or against other states. It is also proposed not to include advisory opinions of the European Court of Human Rights within the scope of the “ECtHR case law” concept, considering their legal nature and the current number of such opinions.

Public figures are subject to high rates of online abuse than everyday users. This article presents findings from a study on digital platforms’ higher threshold for protecting public figures in contrast to everyday users. Presenting a summary of extant literature on the experience, impact and harms of online abuse of public figures, we analyse 31 platform terms of service and related policies to understand the extent to which platforms openly differentiate between public figures and other users. We focus on platforms’ use of ‘newsworthiness’ and ‘public interest’ to justify the differential threshold. Using a cultural-informed approach, we analyse platforms’ reliance on ‘newsworthiness’ and ‘public interest’ justifications to argue that these justifications are utilised without regard for the histories, risk assessment, ethics and labour-intensive processes in which the concepts of newsworthiness and public interest became familiar among more traditional media forms such as news organisations.

ATTHE VERY MOMENT WHEN IDEALISTS and realists are disputing the role of morality and interest in international affairs, students of the domestic political process are waging a similar, though less exacerbated, dispute over morality and interest in internal politics. Their debate centers generally on the vadidity and applicability of concepts of the "public interest" to the political process and policy-making. While this concept of the public interest lacks a neat and precise formulation, it has over years of use (and occasional abuse) acquired a pragmatic and functional definition. It has come to signify that public policy alternative which most deserves enactment. It is, in other words, the highest standard of governmental action, the measure of the greatest wisdom or morality in government. To define the public interest in terms of its role or function is, of course, to beg the question of its nature and the validity of its claim to be a policy standard. The validity of this claim of the public interest to superiority over other interests will be the subject of this paper's inquiry. The phrase "public interest," or some variation on its theme, has run through the American political vocabulary since the early years of the Republic. Its defense has traditionally evoked the most lavish flights of Senatorial oratory; statutory delegations of authority have long carried the admonition that administrators should exercise their powers in the public interest; and rare, indeed, is the pressure group that has not at one time or another masqueraded in the disguise of the public interest. In fact, so potent is the phrase, regardless of the elusive nature of its content, that it has become a symbol for righteousness and morality in American politics. Over and beyond the significance of the public interest for the world of practical politics, however, the term has as well a relevance for the scholarly world of political science. Few of the areas of

This chapter examines the fourth estate principle of the ‘public interest’ as informing important reforms to defamation law in Australia. It offers an historical and international context to the law around investigative and public interest journalism and tracks some of the financial and legal hurdles investigative journalists and their publishers face when defending defamatory material in their reports. Shortcomings of the key defences to defamation are highlighted with case examples. It then details an important recent defamation law reform in Australia – the introduction of a new ‘public interest’ defence modelled on a 2013 UK predecessor – and considers the extent to which it might benefit the enterprise of investigative journalism using historical and international comparisons. The chapter concludes by speculating how the new defence might have applied hypothetically to a current high-profile trial as a means of examining its potential utility for public interest journalism.

This special issue is dedicated to the theme of public interest technology (PIT) [1]. PIT acknowledges that technological potential can be harnessed to satisfy the needs of civil society. In other words, technology can be seen as a public good that can benefit all, through an open democratic system of governance, with open data initiatives, open technologies, and open systems/ecosystems designed for the collective good, as defined by respective communities that will be utilizing them. Just like in the established field of public interest law (PIL) [2], [3] and public interest journalism (PIJ) [4], we can consider potential fields around the idea of PIT [5], [6], such as public interest co-design (PITco), even public interest engagement (PITengage) or public interest consulting (PIC). For decades, public interest engineers (PIEs) have volunteered their time to collaborate in meaningful participative engagements. These engineers have self-organized some impressive collectives including Engineers Without Borders, ASCE Disaster Assistance Volunteer Program, Appropriate Infrastructure Development Group, Architecture for Humanity, Bridges to Prosperity, Bridging the Gap Africa, Engineers for a Sustainable World, GISCorps, Habitat for Humanity, National Engineering Projects in Community Service, just to name a few. These collectives and initiatives call attention to the primary role of a PIT practitioner. That is, the importance of PIT practitioners serving as transdisciplinary intermediaries between the community and the STEM disciplines and technical teams, emphasizing the importance of justice, equity, and inclusion in the design and deployment of new technologies [7] that allow for positive social transformation and empowerment [8].

Implemented in 2021, Australia's world-first news media bargaining code prompted payments of almost AU\$250m annually to flow from Meta and Google to Australian news media businesses. It also prompted international jurisdictions to work toward implementing similar schemes. In June 2024, however, Australia's largest news businesses announced widespread job cuts, blaming Meta's decision not to renew its deals under the code, worth an estimated AU\$70m annually. In this paper, we outline the code before summarizing findings from interviews with senior media representatives who negotiated deals on behalf of roughly 200 news businesses. These interviews address the code's success, its lack of transparency, its contribution to the public interest, and the prospect of Meta not renewing its deals. We then analyze five myths about the code: it is a link tax that will break the internet; it is all about Google News Showcase and Facebook News Tab; it does not support public interest journalism; it favors only big news companies; and it is the only viable option. Drawing on these findings and analysis, we argue that the code is a step toward a sustainable future, but it ought to do more to foster the public interest. This could be achieved by tying the code more closely to public interest journalism and by mandating some transparency. In December 2024, the government affirmed its commitment to the code by announcing a "news bargaining incentive". Instead, we ask whether the code’s aims could be better achieved by replacing it with a public interest journalism levy and must-carry obligations for news content.

Commitment to pursuing stories in the public interest is a longstanding and ongoing tenet of professional journalists and journalism. But what happens when journalists take redundancies and want to continue this work? In this chapter, we meet three people, on different continents, who have reinvented themselves in order to practice public interest journalism beyond redundancy, and in new ways that challenge some of the limitations they experienced in their former, traditional newsroom, careers. The primary data for this chapter is three semi-structured interviews conducted in 2019 and 2020 with Jeanne Pinder in the United States, Michael West in Australia, and Siem Eikelenboom in the Netherlands. All three are successful career-long public interest journalists who between them have accrued major awards, broken impressive stories, and done many of the jobs that journalism demands – from local reporting to international investigations across print and broadcast media. They have all experienced redundancy at major media organisations and have gone on to create websites outside the mainstream that produce distinctive forms of public interest journalism. Jeanne Pinder has harnessed her knowledge of reporting and the business of media to establish ClearHealthCosts, a website with a novel methodology to help readers negotiate cheaper health care in the United States. Michael West has built on his experience as a business editor and popular columnist to launch an eponymous website that tackles Australian corporate tax evasion. And, after a stellar career as a national investigative reporter, Siem Eikelenboom has returned to his hometown in the Netherlands to launch a website that holds local institutions to account.

Of late, the constitutional law of libel has become the focus of increasing dissatisfaction. This dissatisfaction has taken various forms. The argument below, however, is that the most crucial defect of constitutional libel law lies in the Court’s continuing attempts to draw and utilize distinctions among public figure and private figure libel plaintiffs. The Court should abandon these attempts. Instead, the Court should attend, broadly and fundamentally, to the constitutionally vital distinction between libelous speech that does or does not address some matter of public interest and concern. The argument below first emphasizes the constitutional logic underlying the Court’s initial imposition of First Amendment limitations on the state tort law of libel. The argument then critiques the Court’s initial embrace of a supposedly fundamental but actually distracting distinction between public and private figure libel plaintiffs. Interestingly, for a brief time, a divided Court returned to a focus on the underlying logic of putting First Amendment limits on the tort of libel, only to then re-distract itself with a renewed focus on questions of public and private figure status. Perhaps inevitably though, the Court’s emphasis on public versus private figure status has been qualified, in limited ways, by recourse to the genuinely basic and more valuable distinction between speech that does or does not address some matter of public interest and concern. The argument then catalogs some additional problems inherent in the Court’s public versus private figure libel plaintiff distinction. The argument then defends the essential priority of a focus on the public interest versus merely private interest nature of the subject matter of the libel defendant’s speech. A brief, but comprehensive, conclusion then follows.

Chapter Ten concerns the relationship between rights sustaining the liberty to publish and countervailing rights to respect for privacy and reputation. In European economic law, the rules of free movement support the liberty to publish. However, aside from the protection of personal data (Chapter Eleven), little EU law directly addresses the protection of information privacy and reputation, although there are scattered provisions on the right of reply. This area is dominated by European human rights law. Chapter Ten examines the special relationship between respect for privacy and freedom of expression under the ECHR, discussing the importance of 'public figure', 'public interest' and 'public domain' concepts in lowering privacy and libel liability thresholds where good faith and ethical conduct are shown. International law provides a loose parallel. However, trade law is not similarly bound to human rights law. Nor are the ICCPR rights to privacy and freedom of expression similarly merged.

The European Convention of Human Rights along with the case law elaborated by the European Court of Human Rights set an international procedural standard of a fair trial. It exerts a predominant influence not only on the creation and interpretation of European regulations connected with access to court and basic principles of the European justice system, but also on the interpretation of national constitutional laws in the realm of civil procedure. Any evaluation of the impact of protecting human rights and fundamental freedoms on the form, shape and daily practice of the Polish justice system in terms of the remedies mechanism demands that a number of issues be taken into account, not only with regard to the imperative of securing the right to an effective remedy, but also the form and functioning of the same in Poland. They should be adequate in terms of protecting the interests of individual parties as well as public interest. The impact of Art. 10 of the Convention on the evolution of Polish law on protection of freedom of expression is invaluable. According to the analysis, ECtHR case law under Art. 10 of the ECHR has had a major influence on the decisions of Polish courts; in fact, in certain instances it led to significant changes in Polish legislation.

Public interest journalism has faced a longstanding funding crisis, cutbacks of staff and resources, and closures of newsrooms. This crisis is a critical public health concern, and it has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic. At the same time, the pandemic has highlighted the important roles played by public interest journalism - including in addressing health equity issues. The pandemic has also highlighted the need to address structural weaknesses in the media industry, with concentration of media ownership and underfunding of public broadcasters leading to many communities being under-served and under-represented. The public health sector can make important contributions to developing and sustaining a robust, public interest journalism sector. Public health professionals and organisations can advocate for policy reform to support public interest journalism, and incorporate consideration of public interest journalism into advocacy, education, research and practice.

Public interest journalism is an important determinant of health, due to its roles in accountability and holding power to account, empowering communities, and contributing to health literacy. The capacity of public interest journalism to contribute to planetary health and health equity, as well as healthier people, societies, and systems of governance is under attack. Reasons include the collapse of the underpinning business model, the market power of digital platforms, neoliberalism, the rise of authoritarianism, and attacks on press freedom and safety. This paper presents an ecological analysis of the upstream determinants of a healthy and sustainable public interest journalism sector, which is informed by Aboriginal ways of knowing, being and doing, and a decolonising methodology. It also presents a case study of innovation in health-related public interest journalism in Australia, and includes clear calls to action for public health practitioners, researchers and advocates, as well as wider policy making. Key messages Public interest journalism is an important determinant of health. Threats to public interest journalism are a threat to public health. Collaborations strengthen public interest journalism: this presentation provides an example.

Appeal proceedings in criminal cases are regulated in various ways by European legislators. The ECtHR case law does not impose any particular model of appeal proceedings; however, Article 6 is applicable to appeal proceedings and the manner of its application is contingent on the specific features of the proceedings in question. One of the key problems in this respect is the way the issue of the reformatory powers of appellate courts is regulated. This article seeks to reconstruct the rules worked out in the Strasbourg Court’s case law pertaining to this matter, as well as to formulate proposals as regards applying the principle of immediacy in appeal proceedings and the issue of the appellate court’s differing assessment of facts established by the court of first instance. The possible developments of case law in this area are also discussed.