How woud you feel if every detail of your personal life was publicised?

[funnyspelling]

I'm not defending ANYONE, far from it, however, how does "being in the
public eye" make a difference?

If everything you said or did was splashed all over mn for example, how would you feel?

Of course rich and poor people should be treated the same. No-one should have their privacy invaded unless they are doing something criminal, imo.

Sticking to guidelines about not reporting things that infringe a person's right to privacy (and their family's rights too) is not the same as being gagged.

Celebrities should not be able to buy privacy, I agree - they should have an automatic right to privacy, the same as anyone else, unless they have committed a crime. As far as injunctions go, they are there for a purpose. Make them free, then anyone who has a case for protecting their privacy can have one.

This business about the rights of a woman to talk about having sex with a footballer - the media are only interested in what she has to say because the man is rich and famous. This man is famous for being an incredible footballer - Ike the royal family he can't choose not to be famous.

Do rich and famous people have the right not to be exploited by gold diggers? I think so. Even bankers - though I never thougnt I'd see myself in print standing up for the likes of Fred Goodwin. I hate the huge inequalities in society, and the injustices in a system which rewards people for appearing on television more than for working in a hospital, and I wish rich people would pay higher taxes and give more of their money away. But I don't want to punish them in this way. Either they don't deserve the money, in which case change our unfair system and don't pay it to them; or they do deserve it, so don't penalise them for it.

I don't think anyone deserves to have such vast sums of money, btw.

My take on it is this.
Given the present economic climate if someone offered me a sponsorship deal I would go out of my way to promote the product. I would never be seen/heard slagging it off. I would love to earn a fraction of what these "celebs" earn and I would make sure that whenever I was out and about I towed the line.

Once you sell your sole to the press, or indeed sell pictures of your baby/wedding/house etc etc then you are fair game in my book. As someone previously said if you don't like it then do not court the limelight, go and work all hours for a crap wage doing a horrible job. Otherwise shut up and suck it up.

As a side note why are all wags the same????? Don't these men ever go out with ordinary women?

No doubt Giggs's wife will forgive him after considering the holidays to Dubai, the jewellery, the new car, the acres of land,plus the new pair of ridiculously high and expensive shoes she can get just for "forgiving" her errant husband.

I'm not talking about the rights of the 'gold digger' ( although her rights are the same as his) I'm talking about the man's wife his colleagues who may feel there is a public interest in compromising someones privacy. Because privacy ain't just about shagging. There is a principle here.

What can you hide with a privacy law? All sorts of things. That politician bashing single mums in parliament while cheating on his wife a fathering a child, will be able to escape censure.

Although this whole things needs sorting out, I'm not saying it's perfect. And the papers didn't help themselves with all that phone tapping nonsense.

Nick Robinson puts it well: It's a fight between two powerful interest groups - the rich and powerful versus the media - and parliament versus the judiciary. It's all up for debate at the moment.

I don't want a privacy law that hides the wrongdoings of powerful people or that reduces in any way our democratic right to freedom of speech. But I would like to see certain sections of the media receiving a rap on the knuckles for the low levels to which they are willing to sink in their search for a story. I would also like, somehow, to see someone or something else setting the agenda for once. To a large extent this feels like a huge media storm whipped up for the purpose of selling newspapers. When are the media not in the news these days???

I guess the problem is that while I do believe people have a right to privacy, I also believe in the freedom of the press. And ultimately, I suppose, I believe that the freedom of the press is more important than Ryan Giggs' privacy.

And yy to the media being completely up its own arse. It seems to be a downside of 24-hour news channels. They end up a bit pop will eat itself, getting their knickers in a twist over stuff that the vast majority of us couldn't give two hoots about.

Just wanted to add that I don't think I have stood up enough for true investigative journalism - I think some journalists do a terrific job and we really need them to expose shady practices and criminal individuals and companies. But surely it's possible to differentiate in law and in the courts between what the public need to know and what is a private matter.

Giddy

Excellent post

Agreed, great post Giddy.

Some posters have raised the issue of phone 'hacking' (actually not that much hacking about it) by the tabs. I think that has to be dealt with separately. It doesn't make super-injunctions OK. Accessing voicemails without permission is illegal and should be dealt with under that law, not used to justify something entirely different. What the Screws of the World did was appalling and it is particularly reprehensible that the police and the CPS seem to have colluded with them once allegations did start to surface.

I think Hemming was scaremongering because of the appalling issues about family law and privacy which the press and most people are totally uninterested in and remain so which is a huge shame.

As for the comment about footballers' wives standing by their man yes they tend to. Marry a woman with not much brain, no career of her own etc etc and that's what you get. Marry Maria Shriver or Vicky Pryce and you see the money/power/brains of the woman who was cheated on tend to produce a different result.

Yes it can be dealt with under a different law - but it doesn't help the perception of the media when they get high and mighty about freedom of speech.Checking Sienna Miller's voicemail isn't exactly Watergate.

I think this situation needs to be clarified. I know young reporters are under immense pressure to bring in exclusives on celebrity nonsense and therefore will go to extreme lengths.

But I would rather this than the picture Giddy paints.
I wonder if they are considering greater press regulation as the PCC is a bit of a joke.

Yep, excellent post Giddy. Personally I'd be more surprised if a celebrity footballer was faithful to his WAG.

His advisor's have failed him miserably here. The fact is, had he have kept his gob shut, and lay low for a couple of weeks, it would have all blown over. The press would be onto the next target. His wife would never divorce him. Look at his teammate, Rooney......He went to a brothel and shagged a Gran. Coleen married him. He shagged call girls, she forgave him.

He should have flown his family off to some remote island somewhere for an extended "holiday", bought his wife lots of expensive gifts, creeped for a while and let it all blow over.

Now everyone in the world is talking about it and there's no sign of this abating.

Yes, I agree, Giddy Pickle. And I think you are right to be concerned about people being secretly imprisoned, if that is happening.

At least they are discussing the law now - but I don't have any faith in this government getting the balance right between protecting individuals from malicious gossip (whether true or not) and exposing the devious shenanigans and double dealings of powerful people and companies.

What will happen I think is that the people who want to keep super injunctions - as they are and in the way they are being applied - will go to Europe. And maybe that will be a good thing, because if we can't trust our own government to get it right, maybe the European Court of Human Rights will do a better job.

Does the European Court of Human Rights have jurisdiction over what it a domestic matter?

A lot of footballers trade off their image... think sponsorship deals, public appearences etc. And some in particular are held in very high esteem because they are long-standing players and have won personality awards, been awarded OBEs and are basically seen as good people, who are good role models. This goes for many actors and pop stars too. So when someone is about to be exposed as a cheat, they will pay as much as it takes to protect their image. Unfortunately it's not really about privacy... it's all about money.

Mad.

But she wouldn't be jailed at the request of anyone - it would only happen if she broke the injunction, ie the law. And what if she was making totally unfounded allegations about him that would seriously damage him? I still don't think this is the right way to go about things, and it's blatantly unfair that this course of action is only open to people who can afford it, but we don't know enough about this particular case to understand what's going on - which is the point, I suppose.

GiddyPickle, are you against the use of all injunctions for any reasons? If not, then who do you think should decide if someone is entitled to their privacy or not?

I think the issue is whether Twitterers can be identified or silenced, because if this is not possible (and how can it be?), then it doesn't matter what the judges do.

What if she was speaking the truth and he wanted to cover it up? He applied for the injunction, it was generated by the courts.

And we don't know if someone has been imprisoned because we are not allowed to know. Xenia's point about Family Courts is striking. There is alot of concern about these private proceedings.
Privacy is going to be a huge issue in the future- sadly I don't think the government is fit to deal with it.

My husband used to have a 'high profile' job, and I used to regularly read or hear things being said about him, and quite honestly it hurt. (we are talking small fish in a very, very big pond, but there was a media and public interest)

dh always used to tell me what was in the press was fabricated, i read of him socialising in london on a Monday morning, when he was actually with me that weekend, and the same weekend someone else said he couldnt of been in london as he was in another english city! It eventually appeared some one was saying they were my dh to chat up pretty young things!!

We both were part of an interview and when I read the final published article, I was gutted!! And I realised how true he was. So i followed his advice and stopped reading.

Unfortunately public eye, often means public property, and my dh kept his pants on!!

I think it will all just calm down but I[m not happy about the secrecy of family proceedings, adoptions and the like. I think it is a greater wrong to have secrecy than the damage done by allowing the press into those hearings. Most of them the press will not be interested in enough to report anyway and I'd rather take the risk of publicity than have it all hidden so much.

Injunctions about famous people's secrets is not an important thing and is a side issue. There are very few of them and the balance in the HRA between public interest and freedom of expression is fine.

I see that Gordon Ramsey's father in law's alleged long term secret second family - yesterday the courts refused to allow the injunction to continue. I can't find what the grounds for lifting it were though - why that is a secret it is in the public interest that we know and some others aren't.

That is very very rare. The practice is that there are a handful of injunctions by those who can afford them (and also the poor - everyone in the UK can be a litigant in person - it is untrue to say you need money for an injunction - you don't although I accept it's easier to use lawyers) and usualyl they just ensure material is kept secret and usually it's business or adultery type information. It is not likely to lead to a subsequent secret trial.

I do take the point of the girl in the Ryan Giggs case - she was not represented, the court coudl be told (just as the family courts are told things) that she had no chance to refute (eg they could say she'd tried to get cash from him and she should have the right to challenge that and hasn't had that right) so now she may well haev to sue for libel to clear her name if she can, if she's been libelled which I suppose she probably hasn't if the stuff was said only in court.