The Supreme Court of Chile heard on appeal the case of journalists and producers with a television news program. These journalists and producers faced criminal and civil charges filed by a doctor whom they had recorded, without her consent, while she was providing allegedly fraudulent medical certificates. The Court overturned the lower court’s judgment convicting the journalists and instead acquitted them of the crime of “violation of privacy.” The Court had to determine whether a journalist may, by virtue of the right to information, secretly record and then publicly disclose a conversation in which he or she took part, with the purpose of exposing misdeeds that were committed by an individual and are of public interest. The Court began by analyzing whether there was an unlawful infringement of the right to privacy. In this regard, it stated, that the presumption of privacy disappears when it is revealed that a crime or infraction has been committed that is of public interest. In short, the Court said that journalists do not commit the crime of unlawful invasion of privacy by recording and disseminating a conversation with a private individual responsible for providing health care, in which this individual reveals, without knowing that the conversation is being recorded, the commission of a crime or infraction.

A team of journalists with a news program on the “Chilevisión” network conducted an investigation into the provision of fraudulent medical certificates. As part of their investigation, two journalists posed as patients and asked psychiatrists to provide them with medical certificates for diseases that they did not have. The journalists recorded the medical visits in which they were given the medical certificates, and the recorded videos were broadcasted on the news program of the “Chilevisión” network. A psychiatrist who appeared in the videos filed criminal charges against the journalists for the crime of violation of privacy, because they had filmed the medical visits that took place in her office without her consent.

The trial judge who heard the case convicted the program’s journalists and producers of the crime of violation of privacy and sentenced them to 61 days imprisonment, as well as a monetary payment for the pain and suffering inflicted. The Court of Appeals upheld the ruling. The Supreme Court, on appeal, overturned their conviction. The journalists argued before the Court that there could not have been a violation of privacy, since there was never an unauthorized intrusion into the plaintiff’s life nor a broadcast of a private conversation or communications. They argued that for “a conversation to be private, at a minimum it is necessary for two people to interact and for each person to have reason to believe their statements in the conversation will remain confidential, maintaining the confidentiality established by the participants.” [Judgment of Reversal, p. 2]. In the case at hand, one of the participants in the conversation had no interest in maintaining secrecy. Furthermore, they argued that professional secrecy did not apply because it was the medical professional who had the duty to maintain professional secrecy, not the patient, who may freely disclose his or her medical history. Finally, they argued that “any event, conversation, or document whose disclosure affects the public interest is not private.” [Judgment of Reversal, p. 3]. They stated that when balancing the right to information and the right to privacy, the right to information must prevail due to the “public interest” involved in the information, “the nature of the individuals involved, and the accuracy of what was revealed.” Regarding civil compensation, the plaintiffs considered that the trial judge was wrong to convict them, given that the news story was undeniably of public interest and the accuracy of the information disclosed had been proven. In that regard, they asserted that the judgment failed to apply the rules established by exceptio veritatis (the truth exception).

The Supreme Court held for the defendants and reversed the judgment of the Court of Appeals.