The role of the news photographer is in danger of being impeded by privacy laws report the Press Gazette.
Recent decisions in the UK courts, namely Theakston v MGN 2005, and the right to privacy legislation being developed by the EU may conspire to restrict the activities of photographers as stories previously regarded as legitimate areas of inquiry become protected under the new laws .
Amendments to the Human Rights Act which will convey upon citizens the “right to control the dissemination of information about their private life” are being implemented by a ‘judiciary without explicit, or even implicit, reference to the value of photographs in artistic, cultural and historical terms’ the Gazette suggests.