10 May 2011

Max Mosley, Twitter, privacy, where do we go from here?

The motor racing stalwart, Max Mosley has gone to Europe today in  his battle to establish the right of public people to a private life. Was what was written about his sex life in the public interest? Mr Mosley has the cash to ask the European Court for an answer, and that answer could force MPs to consider an privacy act in Parliament.

Ultimately as the host of Popbitch said on Channel 4 News last night, the biggest trigger to journalistic interest in this stuff is hypocrisy – where the individual invites OK, or HELLO magazines into their lives and gives an account at complete odds with the real lives they lead.

One clue – never talk about your private life to a media entity (online or old-media) that specialises in exposure, whether or not you have something to hide. It almost always ends in tears.

There is little doubt in the UK that we have an neo-industrial-scale interest in prurience and the sex lives of other people. It is very hard to divine why.

The French, who seem to enjoy sex lives at least as rewarding as our own, have existed with a Privacy Law for years. It meant that they were able to enjoy, or despair, of an intellectual President, who had fathered an illegitimate child, without question – they never knew. Was Mitterand’s fatherhood a matter that should have been allowed to interfere with his political life? So far as I know, he never used his political life to extol family values that he did not practice. Thus he did not fall into the trap of public hypocrisy.

There has not been a ‘Super Injunction’ issued in the UK this year and the likelihood is that no more will be awarded. It is clearly questionable for any democracy to deny its citizenry the knowledge that a judgement has been made that they may not even mention. That in no way undermines the courts’ ability to injunct against the identification of minors, rape victims, and others who seek the court’s protection.

I confess: personally, I used to favour a privacy act. Now I think it too hard to frame, I doubt it can be achieved. That leaves regulation. Given the newness of it, OFCOM has done an uncontroversial job of regulating the electronic media.

But it’s hard to see the written media ever accepting an OFCOM. That leaves self-regulation. Some argue that in including in the Press Complaints Commission’s ranks the Editors of newspapers, which many argue have unnecessarily invaded the privacy of assorted individuals, self regulation does not give the citizen enough redress. Although the PCC’s latest judgement appears to have given Vince Cable significant redress in his action against the Telegraph for a sting in which he was recorded making comments he regarded as being made in private.

Max Mosley, Twitter, Super Injunctions. The privacy debate is moving fast. To be honest, having lived in the States, I continue to envy the American Constitution which above and beyond anything else enshrines the right to free speech at its core. Strangely, such provision leads to less abuse, than our own repressive libel system. Perhaps we need a written constitution? But that is a whole ‘nother can of worms.

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