Complex legal restraints on the press were explained at a law seminar for the regional press, where “gagging” injunctions and name-and-shame campaigns came under the spotlight.

Potential development of privacy laws and their impact on press freedom were the main subjects of discussion at the Newspaper Society Editorial Law Seminar.

But delegates and speakers also tackled issues arising from recent libel cases, official secrets litigation, danger areas in court reporting, contempt, and self-regulatory developments.

Professor Robert Pinker, privacy commissioner for the Press Complaints Commission, warned of how press self-regulation was likely to be challenged through recent human rights legislation, which some editors fear is being invoked to develop a law of privacy.

He told the seminar: “We can be in no doubt that other celebrities and complainants backed by wealthy newspapers will use the Human Rights Act in order to protect their privacy.

“We can be equally sure that, for the great majority of ordinary citizens going to law will be neither a practical nor an attractive option. The complexities are too daunting.”

The seminar was also told how confidence injunctions, made and heard in private, could be used as an alternative to prosecutions under the Official Secrets Act – a situation which could lead to journalists being in danger of disclosing their source in defending their case.

Delegates also heard that despite the conviction and quashing of a conviction of two regional newspaper editors for breaching a Section 39 identification order on a child, the law had still not been clarified on the extent to which prior knowledge of the young person or the events in question held by certain sections of the community could place the newspaper at risk of breach of such an order.

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