So today – those of us who really aren’t bothered by who is shagging who – found out who the footballer was that obtained an injunction a while back to stop his alleged extra-marital affair from being published in the gutter press. Yes, we knew that his name was being widely published on Twitter.
But today a combination of a Scottish newspaper (where the English&Welsh injunction didn’t apply), an MP who unwisely released his name in the Commons, and the wide publication of the news on Twitter incited various editors to go ahead and publish. Well I hope they get jailed for contempt of court.
That is the editors of the gutter press who named the footballer. The MP also needs a slap for making use of parliamentary privilege for such a base purpose (discussing the issue would be fine; naming the footballer isn’t). And the original tweeter could do with a fine for contempt of court too.
The moguls of the old media would have you believe that this is all a freedom of the press issue … it isn’t. It is about making money.
They complain that it isn’t fair that tweeters can name the footballer where they can’t. Life isn’t fair; get over it.
The truth is there is a basic conflict between public interest and privacy here. But just what is “public interest” ? It is easy to think that it means whatever the public is interested in no matter how puerile, but that is most definitely not the case. Public interest is a bit of a vague term that could be described by “common well-being” or “general welfare” (both terms stolen from the Wikipedia article I linked to).
To qualify as a “public interest” item of news, a story needs to be about something of significance to the public’s well-being. For example, the chairman of a bank caught insider trading, a government minister selling government contracts, the Archbishop of Canterbury shagging the Queen.
People quite rightly expect a certain degree of privacy … even well-known footballers caught doing something they perhaps should not. In such cases the “public interest” has to be sufficient to override the privacy needs of the individual. To claim that it applies in the case of a footballer caught having an extra-marital affair is ridiculous. A footballer is just that … someone who plays football. Whether he or she is having an affair will have no impact on how well the ball leaves the foot.
Most of the fuss about the tweeting of the footballer’s name is simply caused by the old media who want to get in on the interest and sell newspapers. But the reasons why the injunction was obtained in the first place still apply – until the name was released by the old media, the tweeted name was little more than “tittle tattle” or plain gossip. Rightly or wrongly, a story being published in the gutter press gives that story an air of authenticity.
Oh! And a certain footballer needs to have a word with his lawyer – someone who specialises in injunctions should know that you need to get the injunction in both the English courts and the Scottish courts. It is possible the footballer didn’t want to pay for a second injunction (or whatever the legal instrument in Scotland is called), but it is also possible the lawyer didn’t mention it. And there is no excuse for a lawyer to be that ignorant – if I know that much about the law, an English lawyer should also.