So, Max Mosley lost his case at the European Court of Human Rights. Many in the press will call this a victory for free speech. Others bemoan the fact that there was ever a case at all, or that courts should even consider intervening to censor a story.
Yesterday, Tessa Mayes stated in an article at Spiked Online that:
“…Having found himself the subject of a tabloid exposé involving prostitutes and allegedly Nazi-style uniforms in 2008, Mosley had been demanding that, in accordance with the so-called right to privacy, the media should be legally forced to notify people in advance about any story due to be published in which they feature – a move that would probably lead to a surge in free-speech violating injunctions…Nobody is really being harmed when we reveal the truth about people’s sex lives. If there’s any harm done, it was by the personal choices of those involved, not the act of talking or writing about it…in a liberal age, reputations are rarely damaged by an exposé of what so-and-so got up to in private…When married public figures are wrongly accused of having sex with somebody, few morally judge them. And plenty more just have a good laugh or turn the page. This is 2011, not 1811…”
However, I pointed out to Mayes that Mosley’s reputation has been damaged irreparably, as the gossip and tittle-tattle from the original NOTW article is still quoted as fact, even in her own piece. The women weren’t prostitutes, the party wasn’t an orgy and there was no Nazi subtext. (It was actually just a bit of spanking and role-play, followed by tea and cakes.) Yet only the sensationalised and wholly inaccurate version has ever received widespread media coverage. I agree that speech should be free, especially in cases like Trafigura, but it should also be truthful and properly researched.
Far from the glittering Twittersphere scandals of celebrity sex and superinjunctions, hundreds of ordinary people without the funds for legal backlash find their lives ruined by factually-shoddy tabloid witch-hunts. The Daily Mail regularly trawls the IC message boards in search of someone new to base a throwaway page of salacious condemnation on. The comments beneath today’s “Primary school teacher who led double life as kinky sex dominatrix free to continue working with children” shocker show just how harmful these stories can be to the lives of those involved. The quasi-morality of articles like these damage public perception of those with alternative (private) lifestyles or sexualities.
Jane Fae details a similar case in her recent blog post:
“…In this instance, my friend was in an appalling position. A large part of her woes derived from press misconduct. Her best line of defence lay in going even more public. But personal reasons (including the real possibility of physical threat to her and to her nearest and dearest) meant the last thing she could do was go public.
And that’s true not just of her, but of many others I deal with: they are treated very badly by employers and the like because of their marginalised status; but they are terrified of press coverage, because that will out them even further.
The only possible approach for my friend was an injunction. Except she would have had difficulty affording such and an injunction without stipulation that the press could not report on the fact of it was worse than useless.
The logic is pretty obvious, really. If you don’t want the press reporting on your private affairs, there really is no point getting an injunction that says they are allowed to report you have an injunction out, but not what its about. So-called super injunctions make a lot of sense. Because they are pretty much the only way to put a lid on seeing your privacy breached even further.
And so it goes. The UK press will crow today their small victory over Mosley. Meanwhile, I know, the dozens of small people, caught in the same trap as my friend, will see their lives trashed because the press take an interest in them, irrespective of how reasonable that interest, or how guilty they actually are.
And the villains – the ones who really are a menace to society – will continue to hide behind the mere threat of suing…”
Quite.
