Facing up to privacy issue

Richard Butt
13/ 6/2008

I’VE written here before about social networking sites. I’ve more or less abandoned email as a means of contacting friends and do it through those sites instead.

They are also a valuable tool for a journalist.

Just about anyone under 30 has one and there is often quite useful information about them including photographs.

When 18-year-old student Kesha Wizzart and her family were murdered in Fallowfield a year ago, one of the first things I did was look her up on Facebook.

A lot of her friends used her profile to write their own tributes, some of which were moving.

They were obviously in shock and seemed to be using the site as part of the grieving process.

I was looking for anyone who might be able to pay tribute to their friend on television. Through Facebook, I contacted the friends who’d written on Kesha’s site to see if they’d pay tribute to her.

I used no subterfuge. I said I was a journalist and that I was hoping to get her friends to talk about her on television.

In cases such as this, some people like to help because they want to show the wider world how much the person who’s died meant to them.

I do not believe I invaded anyone’s privacy.

After all, Kesha had chosen to put all her material in the public domain and had made it all public to anyone who was in the Manchester network.

Her friends had chosen to (and still choose to) write on her profile.

But some think that for someone like me to read that information and then act on it crosses the line into privacy. Indeed, the Press Complaints Commission is now looking into this issue.

More than 80 per cent of people polled said they’d be less likely to put things on social network sites if they thought the media would use it. I wouldn’t be too chuffed to have some of my life public.

That’s why I’ve made my Facebook details available only to friends.

There would be more of an issue if Kesha had not been an adult. All parents should have a look for their children’s social networking sites. They might be horrified to see what information their children are telling the world.

To me, the issue about adults is very simple. If you don’t want the world to read what you think, don’t write it all down in public.

So if you don’t want someone like me – or anyone else in the world, including possible employers – to read those things or look at your photographs, use the privacy options.

Richard Butt edits Channel M’s early evening news – every weeknight from 5pm