THE Journalists’ Union said yesterday it would be approaching the authorities to suggest changes to the recently passed law forbidding journalists, photographers and cameramen from approaching individuals appearing in court.
An announcement said a Union board meeting had yesterday come to the conclusion that while some journalists had crossed the lines of journalistic ethics, there was still margin for self-regulation when it came to court cases.
“The Journalists’ Union, in line with international principles on the matter, disagrees with the criminalisation of journalistic ethics and insists on self-regulation by the Mass Media itself,” the statement said.
The union said its goal was for a balance to be found between the right to information and the rights of suspects and convicts.
“Towards this goal, we have (in the past) called on the Media Ethics Committee and the Radio and Television Authority in particular to look into incidents and examine the issue with the Mass Media. Unfortunately not everything that should have been done was don.and the result was this law,” the announcement said.
It then called on journalists to act in accordance with professional ethics, which would help the Union’s efforts to have certain “extremes removed from the law”.
The union plans to meet with the head of the Supreme Court, the House Legal Affairs Committee and the Attorney-general on the matter.
The law was unanimously passed by the House Plenum last Thursday, but has yet to be approved by the President and appear in the Official Gazette.
The Cyprus Mail is the only English-language daily newspaper published in Cyprus. It was established in 1945 and today, with its popular and widely-read website, the Cyprus Mail is among the most trusted news sites in Cyprus. The newspaper is not affiliated with any political parties and has always striven to maintain its independence. Over the past 70-plus years, the Cyprus Mail, with a small dedicated team, has covered momentous events in Cyprus’ modern history, chronicling the last gasps of British colonial rule, Cyprus’ truncated independence, the coup and Turkish invasion, and the decades of negotiations to stitch the divided island back together, plus a myriad of scandals, murders, and human interests stories that capture the island and its -people. Observers describe it as politically conservative.
