Journalists should be given public interest defence in law – Lib Dems

The Guardian reports:

Journalists should be able to rely on a public interest defence if they break some laws relating to computer misuse, data protection and bribery, Nick Clegg has said.

The Liberal Democrat leader said he believed journalists should be able to go after information in the public interest without fear of being prosecuted…

“I think there should be a basically a public interest defence put in law,” Clegg said. “You probably need to put it in the Data Protection Act, the Bribery Act, maybe one or two other laws as well, where you enshrine a public interest defence for you, for the press. So that where you are going after information and you’re being challenged, you can set out a public interest defence to do so.”

The flip side of this is that creating such a defence would remove one of the major arguments used in the past against toughening up the penalties for breaches of data protection law – which would be a double win.