Why The Privacy And Public Interest Issue Surrounding Diana Documentary Is Complex

By Gabriel Princewill-

The right to privacy is not an absolute right, but may be limited in law where it is legitimate, necessary, and proportionate to do so. The lattter limitations come to play where the public interest of disclosing ostensily private information outweighs the private rights of the individual(s) concerned.

I was impressed with the perspective of one of our writers, Charlotte Webster, on this topic which w epublished yesterdy, Monday.  However, there are a few voids I feel need to be filled in.

Secret tapes of Diana speaking to speech coach , Peter Settelen ,were unarguably made in private, with an underlying expectation that they were kept private. That presumed expectation of privacy is based on  well founded intuitive grounds of fact and common sense. In the absence of any expression to the contrary by Diana when she was alive, the contents of the tape were for her private private purposes of practising the delivery of her voice whhen talking about mater close to her heart. The view that she secretly wanted them released some day, is probable at best, subjective at worst. The fact is they were made privately.

When assessing the public interest of the public release of those tapes,  there are two valuable considerations to be made.  How much of that inormation has already been in the public domain, and to what extent it is reasonable and necessary for any new information in the tapes to augment and give completion to information already known. The latter consideration will have to have a legitimate purpose, one which Channel 4 says provides a unique insight into the preparations Diana undertook to gain a public voice and tell her own personal story, which culminated  in her later interview with panorama.puts her in front and centre of the public, at a time when the nation will be reflecting on her life and death.  It is her account of events both private and public, and is an important contribution to the historical record”.

The prepartions Diana took to gain a public voice is not sufficiently legitimate to outweigh her rights to privacy concerning any information in the tapes ,not already public. Neither is the fact that Diana’s account of events in private would contribute to public record, sufficients grounds to invalidate her right to privacy. A right that surviving members of her extended family are entitled to want to uphold.

  However,  the right for the public to hear her full personal story is a legitimate right, if a reasonable inference can be made that  certain factors or reasons prevented her from telling the full story she would otherwise had liked to tell. Such an inference made can be based on intuitive wisdom bsed on known facts, and a balancing exercise between the benefits and costs of of disclosing the information deemed private to the public.

Excerpts from the tape, for instance, that allude to an occassion when Diana had approached the Queen for assistance, only to be told that Charles was useless, is a useful analytical point of reference.   Diana may have been afraid or worried to publicly disclose this particular account when she was alive, because of any potential repercussions, whether physically or psychologically. Channel 4 may intrinsically have taken the view that the public need to have this information to gain a greater insight into the afflictions Diana faced in trying to mend her marriage, aiding them to empathise more with her in the 20th anniversary of the Princess’s demise. Channel 4 may also take the view that the public are entited to know why the Queen thought her son was ”useless”, allowing the public which includes the press, the right to question Charles about this, irrespective of whether an answer would be forthcoming. It is a queestion that could always linger in the minds of the public.

A more contentious issue is the divulgence of the Princess’s confession to have been intimately in love with her bodyguard, Barry Mannakee, a married father of two. It is very difficult to justify why this information needed to be made public. Rumours of an affair between Diana and Bannake had been raging, but no evidence was ever found. Bannake eventually died in a car accident, in May 1987,  after a 17 year old beauty therapist, Nicola Chopp pulled out of a junction  towards which Banneke was heading on a bike. Chopp slammed her breaks, but Bannake ftaly tried to swerve and avoid the crash,. Diana once sensationally claimed she believed he was ”bumped off” to avoid embarrassment to the Royal family.   Her claim to have been in love with him private, and would have caused some embarrassment to surviving members of her family. Since her loe for Banneke had never been made public before, Channel 4 can legitimately be said to have erred in making this public. There is no public interest is revealing this.

Diana revealed a lot in her interview with panorama, but obviously did not disclose everything. Those undisclosed pieces of information theoretically remain private, unless there are cogent reasons why they should be at the disposal of the public. When all is evaluated and analysed, the public interest case for airing the documentary about Diana i  her own words, competes well with the privacy rights arguments against it. However, that case falls short when intimate details of Diana’s private life that serve no legitimate purpose in the public domain are then made public. In legal terms, the principle of proportionality is used to balance  competing interests like privacy/public interest by determining whether a measure or step taken is within the scope of what is necessary to achieve a legitimate goal, and whether the benefits of doing so outweigh the costs. The question in relation to the Channel 4 documentary is whether the decision to broadcast was legitimate, necessary, and proportionate. to a desired objective.

With respect to the objectives of helping the public gain an insight into what Diana went through to gain a public voice or to contribute to public record,  the costs far outweigh the befits of disclosing this. In fact, there are no benefits to the public of knowing this private information. It serves no positive necessary contribution to public record, but satisfied the need for her to tell her own personal story, only if it can be ascertained that she wished to do so. It is worth noting that the public interest is not just whether the public are interested or would be interested in knowing some factual detail. Rather, it is whether it is in the public interest for private details of that type to be publicised in light of all the circumstances and potential consequences known.