Following a discussion with a colleague about DP exemptions, I wonder if
anyone has ever considered the use of Section 32 of the DPA, the Special
Purposes exemption. Specifically, does anyone have a definition of
journalism for the purposes of the exemption? I'm wondering whether some of
the work done by local authority public relations departments could be
counted as journalism.
Obviously, PR departments have to work with enormous sensitivity, because
their function is to provide information about their organisation which
presents that organisation in a good light. No PR department would ever want
to abuse people's rights, because that would be entirely counterproductive.
On the other hand, it might sometimes be useful to know that they can use
information more freely than might be the case at the moment. I'm interested
in this because I doubt PR people would get into the territory of damaging
people's interests (which would be, as I say, entirely counterproductive),
and the exemption may have useful applications. I'm agnostic about this - I
don't know whether they would count as journalists or not, but wondered if
anyone else had some ideas?
Tim Turner
Data Protection Officer
Wigan Council
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