Private lives, public information
by Peter Preston Posted Sat, Nov 1 2008
One little word begins to haunt British editors, a word that sounds so clean and so modestly reasonable. We all have a private life, don’t we? So we must surely be entitled to our privacy, as defined in numerous press conduct codes as well as the European Convention on Human Rights. Close your front door, relax and give the wife and children a kiss. What could be more harmless than that? But now read on … for hard cases require hard thinking.
Consider Senator John Edwards, for instance, erstwhile seeker of the American presidency. Did he have an affair in 2006 while his wife fought bravely on against cancer? The National Enquirer, most intrusive of scandal sheets, said he did. Edwards denied it. And then, suddenly, he didn’t. The story might not have been true in every respect, but on the central point of infidelity, it was accurate and mendaciously denied. The mainstream American media at first ignored it. John Edwards needed his privacy, too. But then the facts of the matter — and the lies — came tumbling out of the cupboard.
Weigh that episode in the constant balancing act of the European convention between Article 8, protecting privacy, and Article 10, protecting the public’s right to know. Not much doubt of the final outcome, perhaps. Edwards was trying to get to the Oval Office. His behavior had to have public interest. But then give those same scales a mighty thump as British judges get to work on the balance business.
A well-known British sports star has an affair with a singer. The singer’s husband finds out, turns hugely angry and wants to denounce the star in print. But the main UK judge in most of these cases, David Eady, silences the husband with an injunction because it would infringe the privacy of the sports star’s wife and children. They deserve to be left in the dark.
Or consider Max Mosley, the elected international head of grand prix motor racing. He organizes himself a session of sado-masochistic spanking with a bevy of prostitutes (something, it emerges, he’s been doing for 45 years). A British tabloid, News of the World, exposes that spankerama, takes undercover pictures of the session and (wrongly) finds Nazi connotations there because Max’s dad, Oswald, once led the British Fascist movement. Is that, with innocent, unknowing wife and kids attached, another suitable case for privacy? Justice Eady thinks so and fines the News of the World 60,000 pounds. You can be a big celebrity name, it seems, you can be a world sporting figure, but what you do in the bedroom, however perverted, is your own affair and worthy of legal protection. You can’t print a picture of a famous model leaving a drug treatment clinic. You shouldn’t be able (in Buckingham Palace’s opinion) to reveal that the Duke of Edinburgh has prostate cancer because that’s a private, though happily totally inaccurate, matter. Privacy marches on.
Once upon a recent time, British courts were top of the world league for libel plaintiffs. Aggrieved celebrities came from all over the world to sue in the Strand because our laws were so oppressively weighted against the press. Now privacy is the new, rich kid on the block. Now privacy is proving a weird shield against stories you’d normally expect to see in print. A cuckolded husband is bound to silence because the other man hasn’t told his wife? What kind of perversely defined privacy is that? Don’t betrayed wives have a right to know too?
The difficulty, of course, as with any balancing act, is that there are two sides to every story. Many British journalists, for instance, aren´t too keen on the tactics of Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World. They wrinkle their noses and condemn the celebrity intrusions. Is the world really a better place for constant tales featuring girls who’ve slept with footballers and pop singers and want to collect some money at the end? Surely privacy should offer some relief and recourse.
That’s why, in the simplest terms, the John Edwards debacle is important. The senator fought long and hard for the nomination. His sick, gallant wife in remission, was out on the stump, proclaiming their love. Yet only the dirt diggers of American journalism were investigating, turning over stones. Only those who habitually shrug away the moral tangles of privacy were not deterred.
So, alas, there isn’t a real argument here, just pragmatic necessity. The more the rich and the famous can declare whole areas of their lives off-limits, the more the public’s right to be informed diminishes. The fewer investigations actually started, let alone finished, the more silence inevitably reigns. Different countries have different traditions and rules of law, to be sure, but the practice in one land soon slips over national boundaries.
Don’t suppose that what David Eady says today won’t have much wider currency tomorrow. And don’t forget that John Edwards himself was a high-flying lawyer, well versed in what’s right … and what could be got away with.
Peter Preston
Global Journalist columnist Peter Preston is editorial director of the Guardian Media Group and was the chairman of IPI from 1995 to 1997.