Introduction

Abstract

In Bloomberg v ZXC, the Supreme Court decided that ‘a person under criminal investigation has, prior to being charged, a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of information relating to that investigation.’ The decision adds the highest court’s authority to a conclusion that the lower courts had reached in a series of decisions. While Richard and Sicri are the most notable decisions that directly addressed the point, the foundations for the conclusion can be found in earlier cases such as Hannon. Those decisions prompted considerable academic discussion in the Journal of Media Law and elsewhere. Given the importance of ZXC in developing the scope of privacy law, the Journal is hosting a collection of comments and reflections on the Supreme Court’s decision from several scholars that have participated in the earlier discussions. As the following pages show, the ruling may have settled the legal position, but there is still much to debate about the merits of this decision and what it means for privacy and defamation. To recap the facts of ZXC, the claimant was the chief executive of a division of a company under investigation for corruption in another country. The fact that the company was under investigation was known and had been reported on since an announcement by the law enforcement body in 2013. In 2016, Bloomberg published an article stating that ZXC had been interviewed as part of the investigation. That article was not the focus of the proceedings. A claim in misuse of private information was brought in relation to a later article, which included information taken from a