Like many I woke last Thursday to the horrific news of the live on air execution of a US journalist and her cameraman, and subsequent suicide of their disgruntled former colleague. The killings were captured on digital video and broadcast first by the victims, and then by the shooter, who uploaded his “first person” footage to social media before taking his own life.

The rush to judgment in the Germanwings air crash tragedy is unseemly and precipitous, but entirely predictable and understandable.

We’ve been grappling with a difficult question recently, and one that’s featured in New Zealand’s courts too. What is and isn’t news media and when should the Privacy Act apply?