It seemed like a good idea at the time. With plenty of interesting recent developments, I decided to write the lead piece for this week’s in depth on defamation and privacy. Then stuff kept happening… well, it’s certainly been fascinating but it’s also been a fairly depressing spectacle as the debate about privacy, libel and free speech has been warped beyond all recognition by media hysteria.
For practitioners in the area the themes are already wearily familiar: claims about (often imaginary) superinjunctions, howls about “judge-made” privacy law and free speech that is forever being “chilled”. The self-interested campaign surely reached its zenith with the nonsense about newspapers standing up for women’s rights to sell sex stories on the basis that those trying to stop them are men – quite possibly the thinnest argument ever offered in the name of freedom of speech.
