On February 18th, The Guardian published an editorial raising concerns about a ruling on a media case between the publisher Bloomberg News and an unnamed individual who was at the centre of a criminal investigation. The dispute was over the matter of identifying an individual as being the subject of a criminal investigation - before any charges had been brought.The Guardian said,

On Wednesday, in a landmark privacy case, the UK supreme court ruled that suspects in a criminal investigation have the right not to be named in the media, prior to charges being brought against them.

The Guardian went on to comment,

Wednesday’s ruling was a sign that the pendulum has swung too far towards the suppression of information which is of legitimate public interest.

In several areas the editorial made claims which were without evidence, or wrong.Firstly it blamed the Leveson Inquiry for a drift among the courts towards favouring privacy rights over freedom of expression. As The Guardian well knows, the substantive recommendations of the Leveson Inquiry were not implemented. Because The Guardian - along with the rest of the national press - lobbied against them.Indeed, in 2017 and 2018, as almost every major progressive political party - backed by several brave Conservative MPs - sought to force the Government to proceed with Leveson Part Two and a recommendation of Leveson Part One, it was The Guardian which came to the rescue of Theresa May's Government, standing alongside The Sun and The Mail in the newsstands, and Jacob Rees Mogg, Michael Gove and Boris Johnson in Parliament, to resist that Inquiry and those reforms.The editorial went on to mischaracterise the judgment in several ways.In general, the editorial took the same tack publishers often do in arguing that newspapers should have the right to name suspects before charge: that naming people encourages other victims or witnesses to come forward. Those who take another view, therefore, must be on the side of suspected criminals, and are enabling them to get away with their crimes.Hacked Off's view - and seemingly, the view of the courts, as this position was broadly reflected in the ruling - is that where there is a reasonable chance that naming a suspect would indeed encourage victims to come forward, then it would be legitimate for that person to be named.But that decision should not be taken by a newspaper editor, reflecting on how to draw in readers. It should be taken by judge, in possession of the facts, reflecting on the public interest. The alleged public interest in publication was taken into account by the judge in this case, and was found to be lacking.The debate here is not, fundamentally, about naming people accused of crime or not. It is about whether the decision to name a suspect is made on the basis of what will sell more newspapers, or what is in the public interest.Hacked Off's view is that in the first instance, police make the decision as to whether it is appropriate to name a suspect. As they do so, they should balance the interests of justice & encouraging witnesses, evidence and victims to come forward, against the risk of great harm to that individual's reputation. They should record their reasons transparently. Conversely, that decision should not be made by a reporter with fragments of information, some of which may be unreliable and, as in this case, was obtained unlawfully.If The Guardian were a member of an independent regulator, which protects the public from disinformation, abuse and discrimination, Hacked Off would have made a complaint about the mischaracterisations of this editorial. As The Guardian marks its own homework, through a different but equivalent system of complaints-handling to the rest of the national press, there is little use in making a complaint.Instead we sent in a letter for publication, which The Guardian have chosen not to publish.In the interests of giving the public access to both sides of this issue, here is the letter we had hoped The Guardian would have had the integrity to publish:

Dear EditorThe Guardian's editorial on Friday 18th February, "The Guardian view on privacy law and press freedom: failing to strike a balance", is wide of the mark on several fronts.It argues that judgements in media cases have tended to favour privacy rights over freedom of expression, attributing this shift to the Leveson Inquiry. Yet the substantive legislative reforms recommended by Leveson - lobbied against by The Guardian, alongside The Daily Mail, The Sun and the rest of the national press - have never been brought into effect. The right to privacy in respect of pre-charge investigations and arrests is a well established European human rights protection for accused individuals. It has slowly come to be recognised by the English courts. As is well known, human rights law also (rightly) provides special protections for public interest journalism.Contrary to your apparent suggestion, in practice suspects are rarely (if ever) able to bring defamation claims in relation to accurate reports of investigations or arrests. If, as often happens, the investigations come to nothing (something which is rarely reported) their reputations are permanently damaged.The Guardian also mischaracterises the judgment. The Courts carefully balanced the rights of privacy and free expression. It was found that in this case, the privacy rights of the suspect outweighed the public interest in publication. In a society subject to the rule of law, such decisions are properly a matter for independent judges (in possession of the full facts), not for newspaper editors (or politicians who have been lobbied by media interests).Like much of the national media, you ignore the fact that the overwhelming majority of the public (86% in a YouGov poll after the Sir Cliff Richard case) favours pre-charge anonymity. (Source: https://inforrm.org/2018/07/24/yougov-poll-public-backs-courts-decision-in-cliff-richard-case-86-favour-investigation-anonymity/ ).The right to privacy in relation to criminal investigations is not a catch all instrument to protect the powerful and wealthy. As in last year’s case of Alaedeen Sicri (source: https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2020/3541.html ), it protects ordinary citizens who are innocently caught up in criminal investigations from having their lives destroyed. The decision is a welcome one which properly strikes the balance between privacy and press freedom.