To wonder what the point of an injunctions is?

[LikeDylanInTheMovies]

In the age of social media and access to news sources across the globe, it seems absurd to a layperson that a ruling that only applies to England and Wales would serve to keep a lid on a story? Anyone interested in discovering the identity of the person concerned can find out who the people involved are with a few taps of their keyboard.

Likewise in PR terms it seems a disaster, would it not have been better to just say ' yes we have an open relationship, both parties are happy with that and it is nobody else's concern, but we are disappointed people we considered friends sought to profit from our private life' rather than stirring up even more interest and gossip via an injunction that was never likely to be effective. I have no interest in who celebrities sleep with, but my interest was piqued by the heavy handed and ultimately futile injunction.

Is there anyone with experience of the legal/PR industries think of these injunctions? Are they an expensive waste of time or can they be effective in furnishing celebrities with a degree of privacy?

Now I know I don't care. The injunction has made it far more than it ever needed to be.

I think I'd be more surprised if there was an article detailing the fact that this couple had not been unfaithful to each other.

If a regular citizen tweets, facebooks or blogs who this couple are could they face prosecution?

I'm surprised the couple are not being done for blackmail or extortion. It was reported, that the reason for the injunction, was that the couple tried to sell their story to the press.

Surely they could only be done for blackmail if they were trying to get money from the actual celebrity couple. Selling their story to a newspaper is a different thing, surely, as the money would come from an independent source?

That's not blackmail or extortion Crunchie

Awake

Yeah Jimmy, next, EJ will have been "straight" and has just been "confused" for all these years.

Is the injunction still standing?

I agree that injunction made this more than it needed to be. Had they just said yes this happened blah, it would have been done and dusted with people already looking for the next "sleb scoop" . Really have no more interest than if it were my neighbours although if my neighbours took part in a threesome they would need to be super quiet as our new build walls are very thin and super injunction would be quite pointless

MNHQ have done some cracking delete messages though. I couldn't give a stuff about the slebs but I really enjoyed the haitch queue pun last night. [feels guilty]

Being slightly pedantic - I don't think in the case a "super injunction" is what's been ordered - rather it's just an "injunction".

In the case of the former, the British press can't even report that the injunction has been granted - which is clearly not happening here.

I agree totally that an injunction is a waste of time and that those involved would have been better "owing" the story. TBH it's not actually that shocking if they have an open relationship well tbh who cares? If it had been published it really would be yesterday's fish and chip paper by now, but this will just run and run until someone leaks it formally.

In the age of social media it's really just silly trying to stop information leaking and actually escalates the story in terms of its legitimacy and longevity.

Super injunctions are particularly insidious however. Remember Gordon Ramsey's FIL slagging him off in the press and then it all comes out that part of the reasons for the "feud" were covered by an SI and Gordon couldn't say anything. I'm not a GR fan - but there was something deeply insidious about his FIL being able to make very strong public statements in the knowledge that a huge amount of back story was going unreported to his advantage.

I'm not sure how long that post will still be standing...

LikeDylan

I can see why the injunction was taken out to prevent the other party selling the story to the papers, but I think the whole thing was handled badly.

Deals are done by publicists to prevent this kind of thing all the time. Admittedly, there's no big industry presence behind this one to dissuade the media but the celebrity in question could have given the DM an "exclusive" about something else to stop the story or even turned the whole thing into a "marriage crisis with a happy ending" story themselves.

One a general note, I have suspected for some time that the DM is being paid to publish certain celeb stories. I also suspect they have deals with other organisations to publish other types of stories as well.

at the last few posts!

week Yes,all those sycophantic articles about reality TV stars and z Listers read like paid adverts a lot of the time. The pictures of people taken without their knowledge are much more grainy and less smiley!

Wades back in

I wasn't going to comment on here again (though thanks for positive comments about my posts) but I saw someone mention Steve Coogan and got very righteous about it.

Never liked his comedy vehicles much and certainly not his drugging and hoeing but I remember the DM article about him and it was an absolute ruddy disgrace. They basically outright held him responsible for the attempted suicide of Owen Wilson and he cried in The Leveson Inquiry as he explained how he found out he couldn't sue without having to involve Wilson and Wilson having to disclose the true reasons.

DM probably hoped he would sue vile rag.

I digress - feeling like a true survivor of this thread

popbitch.com/home/2016/03/31/up-the-injunction/ interesting piece on how newspapers skirt around injunctions]]