This book contains the lecture "Privacy and the Media - A Comparative Perspective", given in the framework of the Intensive Programme "Challenges to the Person by Technology: Legal Responses" hosted by the Norwich Law School. The Lecture deals with privacy and the law in four different countries: Germany, France, England and the United States of America. Their legal systems have entirely different concepts of protections and balancing of the competing interests freedom of the press and protection of privacy. The US system is characterized by priority given to freedom of press and opinion. French law, on the other hand, seeks to grant the utmost protection to the individual. Germany attemps to find a balance between the protection of privacy and freedom of press and opinion. English law, however, does not show any particular preference for either competing interest. It is, due to its common law character indifferent to the press and, in some respects, simply inconsistent.
