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About LinkBacksRead more.Twitter really comes into its own when it comes to anonymous publishing.
Read more.Twitter really comes into its own when it comes to anonymous publishing.
The issue here is not the allegations themselves but that these so-called super injunctions even exist. There are things that the public should know, necessity or not. For every ten stories of a famous person being found naked wandering around Kempton Park wearing a sheepskin rug and nothing else that gets buried, there's one story about oil traders dumping toxic waste that's covered up too.
For every positive aspect of "anonymous" publishing there's going to be a huge number of negative ones:-
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/ukne...sentenced.html
What ever happened with that story, there was a big ho ha ha, but nothing came of it?Originally Posted by amdavies
Was there actually any evidence of wrong doing? I saw lots of supposition in very disreputable sources thou, so I'm guessing no smoke without fire and all that.... Oh wait, its because of retards who think that way we need super injunctions.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_C%...xic_waste_dump
Short version seems to be: It happened, the company involved agreed that it happened but they don't accept that they did it on purpose.
Always the way, isn't it? Settling without admitting liability... part of wishes it was banned, it's such a pathetic back-road out of everything.
I know in many ways it's a legal quirk, but I dislike most of the legal quirks relating to large sums of money moving from one group to another to make a problem go away.
How would you like it if every person you met had a rundown on all your indiscretions, every little sordid thing you had ever done and some extra lies/embellishments on top? People, including celebrities are entitled to a private life, the papers have no place printing about who shagged who. Affairs happen, all the time, all over the place, most of these "journalists" have probably had one themselves, yet think it's perfectly OK to tear down some celeb in order to create some fake moral outrage and sell a few papers.However, it has long been felt that super injunctions are being used predominantly to prevent embarrassing gossip from getting into the papers, and that is a flimsy reason for restricting freedom of speech.
"But we need to know what our role models are doing, think of the kids" - NO! If the paper's didn't print that semi-accurate tittle-tattle then the kids wouldn't be corrupted thinking footballer X was doing it so they can as well, they'd carry on thinking he was a heroic sportsman and just wish to play like him. Sometimes not knowing something about someone is better.
Super-injunctions have a place - controlling the newspapers and their runaway violations of privacy. So long as when it is in the public interest - i.e. corrupt politicians and taking bribes etc they are not granted then democracy survives. To be honest I also fail to see how knowledge of a politician having an affair is important - does the fact he boned his secretary affect his ability to do his job? Doubt it, unless he's the "Minister for Morality and No Boning At Work".
Surely that's why we have libel laws?
Furthermore, I think the main point here is that if we want people to have privacy (and I don't disagree with that), then everybody should have that privacy. It should be a nationwide law that you must not publish details of people's lives with respect to A, B and C.
As things currently stand, you can publish whatever the hell you like, but if people are rich and connected enough they can get a judge to block publication of various aspects of people's private lives. If it was consistent I don't think people would mind too much.
It's not as if papers have been publishing stories about people doing things they haven't done for decades, and getting away with it, free of punishment. There have always been repercussions, and that's why it doesn't happen, and it if does it's rare and usually results in a large cash settlement.
It's often well published the initial accusation, the apology is on page 19 in the bottom left... mud sticks, true or not. It's often the same people who cannot afford a super injunction who also cannot afford lawyers to sue the papers, the inequality is wide.
I quite agree, we need proper privacy laws - for everyone. Most people are protected just by being ordinary though, paper's wouldn't print it if you or I had some sordid affair, maybe a few of our friends would find out, but it wouldn't be splashed across the interwebs so every person we meet for the rest of our lives knows about it.
Hounding and persecuting people over their private lives is wrong. Unless it is in the public interest because it genuinely affects their job that they do on behalf of the public then it should be kept private.
I agree on the first point, but there's obviously a sliding scale. We're so unimportant that we won't get reported on, and footballers are so rich that they can get injunctions. There must be a middle ground though - people who do get reported on, but are unable to get injunctions - there are enough "celebrities" who have been declared bankrupt.
Yes exactly!
Newspapers should have to be able to demonstrate to an ethics panel that their stories about people's lives affect the reason they are in the public eye, for example sportsmen using drugs, politicians sleeping with russian spies... i.e. something we need to know, not gossip.
There's another issue here that sits alongside the right to privacy and that's the right to self-promote.
Celebrities need exposure, they need to be seen by the public as often as possible or they get forgotten and lose their "bankability" as a name. Do you think that every time a celebrity has their picture taken on a supposedly private holiday that they knew nothing about the photographer being there ? Some have, supposedly, even invited photographers along and told them which picture they want to be released.
The most obvious case to demonstrate this is Katie Price (Jordan) who has made a fortune solely on her ability to promote herself. She has no meaningful job beyond that of being famous, no apparent skills other than either being able to hire a good PR department and/or the ability to know exactly what to do to generate maximum exposure in the press. She uses the tabloids to such a degree that you don't know where self-promotion ends and gossip begins (if it even does).
She's the extreme case but celebrities are more than ready to use publicity to make themselves money and in doing so you're making a deal with the devil. When you yourself create a desire amongst the public to know what you're doing then it's very difficult to then say "you've got to respect my privacy" when you come across a subject in which you no longer want that publicity.
It's not an excuse but you can see where the problems for the press lie. If you got situations where a story can or can't be run solely because of the celebrity involved then it's going to create issues. It would then come down to PR departments having the last say on stories.
Just for fairness and balance, too many journalists are actual arseholes.
Despite all this, ultimately, it's entirely the fault of the people who buy the rags that run these stories.
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