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Superinjunctions
Former Member
Posts: 1,876,323 The Mix Honorary Guru
What do we reckon? Likely to survive for celebrities protecting their imgage, or heading fast for disappearing.
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I still believe that such injunctions will exist but there will be clearer guidelines on when such an injunction is appropriate and when it isn't. I also believe that there will be an expiry period on such injunctions that will be far shorter than it is at present. I think that interim orders will be granted to allow people to sort out their affairs before the media can make those affairs public. However, I think such orders will be limited to a matter of months rather than years and the primary aim will be to give consideration to those affected by whatever is being concealed.
That's how I see this playing out.
As for protecting the guilty, "celebrities" who've got more money than sense and can't keep their dick in their pants? Let's just say, if you cheat then karma can be a bitch.
Injunctions for someones image are a joke - and have proved that there is actaully a use for twitter.
In an ideal world I would like to see it made illegal for the press to pay sums of money for stories. Perhaps it would see far more stories slipping under the net, and some of those might be of great public interest, but I don't like the idea of people profiting from misery in the way that 'whistleblowers' often do. I should imagine they'd profit from media attention regardless of any lump sump payment anyway.
Also I would like to see harsher penalties for media company releases that are subsequently proven to be false, and not just when the victim decides to take private action. There should be a real incentive to make sure that facts are established before careers and lives are wrecked.
Yeah, see, no.
Unless it is forced celebrity (I am trying to think of an example and failing) or someone who is born into it, the career they choose means they are going to be bombarded by the media. They know this. People who keep their entire private lives private I agree with you, but those who use their celebrity for personal gain or Katie Price/Kerry Katona themselves and sell every aspect of their lives to television should not be able to pick and choose which aspects of their lives are too private for the media which has accelerated their popularity.
ALSO, wrt the Imogen Thomas/Ryan Giggs thing, while I don't think she is an entirely innocent party, I DO think it is massively unfair that she was "outed" and therefore forced to take all the flak for something which took two people.
Though to be fair she was only out because she tried to sell the story to the papers.
I can see the use of superinjunctions in that some celebs are basically blackmailed by people threatening to go to the papers. The celeb probably should have kept their trousers on, but that doesn't mean that we shouldn't give them some protection against being set up.
However, whether in a word of tweets and internet superinjunctions work is another question
Do they though? Off the top of my head I can think of one who does have a private life, Jamie Redknapp. He's happily married, doesn't go out on the town, doesn't cheat, doesn't do much of anything really. Because of that we don't see his photo in the papers, the press leave him alone because he's boring.
Giggs on the other hand slipped it into a big brother contestant/glamour model. He's a cheat and he tried to avoid exposure by turning to the courts, instead of just doing what Redknapp does and keep it in his pants.
Frankipanda, I can think of the Middletons. With the exception of Kate, I don't think the rest of them are appreciative of the cameras following them around everywhere....
Nonsense.
Lets take Jeremy Clarkson as an example, because he's said he's in favour of injunctions. His career is to be a motoring journalist, his job is to drive fast cars quickly and make lazy sexual innuendos on the television. He doesn't claim to have any moral authority over anybody else, he doesn't claim to be whiter than white. Therefore if he chooses to sleep with someone who is not his wife (as has been alleged), then that is a matter for him, his wife and his mistress.
The only time sexual indiscretions should be reported is when the relationship affects an important professional role (e.g. Fred Goodwin allegedly sleeping with a senior RBS executive whilst the bank collapsed around him), when a politician is claiming one thing and doing another (e.g. David Mellor and his toes) and when a criminal act has taken place. If Wayne Rooney chooses to go and sleep with a skanky hooker she should not be allowed to sell that story to the newspapers.
What is in the public interest is not the same as what is interesting to the public.
No, she was outed because she tried to extort £50,000 out of Ryan Giggs by saying she would go to the papers if he didn't pay her. She then colluded with The Sun newspaper by begging to meet him in a hotel and then covertly taking paparazzi photographers along to snap them together; the newspaper were intending to print the photos as a "secret liaison", implying that a relationship that had ended was still ongoing.
If you haven't done so already, you should go read Eady LJ's judgment in the case. It's fascinating. She was named because she behaved disgracefully, she wasn't named because she had a relationship with him.
As for Jamie Redknapp, his "quite private life" extends to running a magazine where you have to earn £1,000,000 a year before you are allowed to buy it. The guy's an arse.
That sounds like good advice to me.
Coincidently,the judge utilised the same words used previously by Flashman in this thread, namely "set up" and "blackmail".
There is a reasonable right to privacy and there is a reasonable expectation that a sexual relationship should be private. People have a freedom of expression but not where it impacts upon other people and the only exception to this should be where there is a public interest angle which outweighs the impact on privacy. An example of this is the Trafigura case- the company were illegally dumping toxic waste and should never have been granted an injunction to prevent newspapers from reporting it.
If Imogen Thomas wants to tell Giggs' wife that he's a cheat she should be allowed to do that. Nobody would argue with that- the matter is being kept private. But what the hell gives her the right to demand fifty grand off him and then toddle off to the newspapers anyway?
The right to expression does not, and should not, extend to kiss-and-tell stories in tabloid newspapers. It has nothing to do with "censorship", it's about common courtesy. I wouldn't expect a one-night-stand to blog about their sexual relationship and it doesn't change because he happens to be wealthy. We're not talking about a case of public hypocrisy- Giggs isn't a politician banning divorce or demanding "family values" and he isn't a homophobe with a secret gay relationship- we're talking about a man who happens to be good at football having sex with a woman who happens to be good at being orange. he has a reasonable expectation to privacy.
Yes, he shouldn't have cheated, but that's a matter for him and his wife. As for the harm, it isn't just his public humiliation, why should his wife have paparazzi doorstepping her? I take you have seen the photos of her this morning with a massive discussion about the fact she's not wearing a wedding ring. Seriously, just leave her the fuck alone.
I'm confused, how on earth is she harmed? She agreed to have sex with him for money and took his money, where is the harm? That she wasn't allowed to get another twenty grand off a tabloid newspaper? If Wayne Rooney had been Wayne Rooney, MD of Rooney's Carpets and Rugs in Wythenshawe, nobody would have given a shite and no newspaper would have paid. She doesn't go to the tabloids for every client, only the ones people have heard of.
The consequences of having extra-marital sex are that your spouse finds out. The prostitute should have told his wife, not taken twenty grand and told the entire world. The fact that newspapers print this bollocks does not make it acceptable. They printed pictures of Pippa Middleton with no top on and that's not acceptable either.
I'm not sure where I stand on this issue, but that got a genui-LOL.
People don't have the right to "tell their life story if they so choose" if, by telling that story, they will impact on other people without good and just cause. That's not a groundless assertion, that's a legal fact; if you don't believe me, go and examine the judgment by Eady LJ. In this case it isn't just Giggs it impacts on, but it also impacts on his wife and children- not the cheating, but the doorstepping by photographers desperate to get photos of his wife and kids to see how she's "coping".
Helen Woods is free to sell her story of life as a prostitiute- she could make a fortune, Belle du Jour did without ever naming a single client. What she isn't free to do is go around naming who her clients are because they have a reasonable expectation that she will keep the transaction secret. Again, that is a legal fact as a couple of actors have had injunctions taken out to prevent her naming them.
If the injunction just prevented those actions then I wouldn't have an issue with it, but it doesn't.
Using the protection of the court allegations have been made about an individual who, because of that ruling, has not right to defend herself. As someone else has said, there is also the basic right (or what *should* be a basic right) of freedom of expression. There should never be a case - with the exception of national security - where a "fact" cannot be reported or said. When you have injunction which effectively mean that you and I cannot even talk about it fullstop, then we have a serious issue.
I really don't care whether Gigss or any other "top premiership footballer" is screwing around. I do care whether the press have a right to do a story about it. Just as I did with Trafigura.
As for the Human Rights Law and "privacy", isn't that privacy from the state, not from other people?
This is the judgment in the case, granting the injunction: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2011/1232.html. Seriously, read it and get back to me. In particular, I would draw attention to the following:
The media in this case are not reporting what the actual decision was and much of the discussion is based in incorrect hearsay. Mr Justice Eady (turns out he's not an LJ yet) weighs up all of what you discuss: whether there's a reasonable expectation of privacy and whether it's in the public interest. It is very telling that the newspapers are wailing about "privacy by the back door" without addressing the judgment in question.
He would have done better, IMHO, to come out with the victim approach of that and sought an injunction to protect his children. Instead this still comes across as him protecting his own image.
However, all that said, I go back to my original point. This order prevents the reporting or anything in this story and so you end up with the situation where innocent people are named instead of the guilty parties. Fact is, Giggs *did* have a sexual relationship with her as we now know.
With Imogen, why is she telling her story to the press? Yes she should be free to tell her story but would she tell the papers or would they even be interested if there was not money involved?