ABSTRACT
There is no mention in current codes of conduct of the journalist's right or obligation to withhold information which might cause mass alarm and endanger a society. Appealing to the public interest does not provide a criterion which enables a journalist to decide easily whether or not to publish. Because the notion of the public interest is so difficult to detail accurately, it follows that it can be used to justify different actions. It does not lead to a prescriptive code. The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) code may invite journalists to forget the vital word in the National Union of Journalists' code of professional conduct that intrusions into privacy are only justified by 'over-riding considerations of the public interest'. The ethical dilemma which the codes present is as follows: if any action at all can be justified by the codes, then the journalists cannot be truly accountable, since they can justify all their actions in retrospect.
