Who gives a damn about privacy? Not the managers and editors who publish perhaps as many as two thirds of media Web sites. A recent study done by a team of researchers at USC's Annenberg School for Communication and UC Berkeley's Graduate School of Journalism found a remarkably poor performance by Web sites that track people's movements online and collect personal information. Only about 38 percent bothered to tell their readers what they were doing with this data.

But the public - and consumer groups and lawmakers - do care a lot about privacy. For media Web sites to ignore this well-placed concern invites disaster.

Many technologies, launched with great promise for public benefits, have been stopped cold by adverse reaction to their shortcomings. Physicists and engineers in the 1960s, at the outset of nuclear power design and deployment, failed to take into account concerns over safety. Aviation visionaries didn't anticipate the public reaction to airport noise and sonic booms. The fight now rages over the downsides of genetically modified foods.

Does the online news industry want to go down that path?

The USC/Berkeley privacy study, funded by the Ford Foundation, indicates that the larger media sites with the most traffic appear to be doing a better job of disclosing privacy practices and adhering to standards set by groups such as TRUSTe and the Better Business Bureau. But someone has to go after the laggards, the smaller operators who either don't know or don't care about consumer fears over unauthorized distributions of data on viewing and buying habits.

If the online news industry continues to ignore this dismal performance, brands and credibility, built over many years by news organizations, will suffer. Worse yet, industry inaction will prompt government action. Legal scholars, such as Eugene Volokh at UCLA, warn that information privacy restrictions can set precedents that could lead to bans on truthful speech that should be protected.

Government codes that might dictate 'fair information practices,' Volokh argues in a persuasive Stanford Law Review article, can also lead to government codes regulating 'fair reporting,' 'fair filmmaking' and 'fair political criticism.' Laws already allow many restrictions, such as bars on 'non-newsworthy' information that might be highly private or embarrassing. But a league of difference separates whether a company knows what car you drive or whether your neighbors learn that you have been raped, Volokh points out.

Governments already have a compelling interest - and power - to restrict the communication of information that might put people in danger of a crime, such as by publishing the names and addresses of jurors or posting Social Security numbers. But should that be extended to protecting persons from the discomfort of knowing that people are talking about them or learning about them?

Internet news organizations, which live by free expression, would be nailed by new and severe government restrictions on information privacy speech. As a matter of survival, they have to do everything possible to prevent consumer alienation.

Two antidotes exist: 1) clear promises not to communicate customer information without permission and 2) enforcement mechanisms designed to give consumers confidence in the whole online news industry.

Clearly, self-regulation needs to be beefed up. Industry bodies and third-party groups, such as the Online News Association and European Journalism Centre, must set online privacy standards and enforce them. Major corporations that benefit from Web trade have got to put up the money to make this work.

The Internet thrives on its interactive, freewheeling, Libertarian flow of thought and action. Industry inaction on privacy could rob this new medium of its greatest benefits. This doesn't have to happen.