Media law

La persona di interesse pubblico is the entry on this list that an English reader can render word for word and get badly wrong. The Italian phrase names the person whose conduct the public has a legitimate reason to look into: a minister, a chief executive, a judge, anyone whose office or fame makes what they did a matter for readers rather than for their friends. The plain rendering is « a public figure », and that is the term English media law itself uses when it sets a lower bar for what may be reported about somebody. What must not be reached for is « a person of interest ». Those words look like a literal translation and they belong to another world: in police language, taken up by newspapers everywhere, « a person of interest » is somebody the investigators want to question, a step short of « a suspect » and a long way from innocent in the ear of anyone reading it. Calling a minister « a person of public interest » in an English report therefore does not describe their standing. It hints, with no evidence, that they are being looked at.