Through the looking glass - the strange morality of Planet Injunction
As we march into a secular age, society is getting oddly moralistic. Certainly, to judge from the extraordinary and sustained controversy over injunctions, the whole idea of the guy with a spotless past getting to throw the first rock is now dead and buried. And so the mounting storm over privacy law – far from being calmed by the long-awaited publication of the Neuberger report on Friday – rumbled on over the weekend, culminating on Monday, after yet another day of developments, court hearings and outpourings on Twitter, in an MP using Parliamentary privilege to flout a court order.
May 25, 2011 at 07:03 PM
3 minute read
As we march into a secular age, society is getting oddly moralistic. Certainly, to judge from the extraordinary and sustained controversy over injunctions, the whole idea of the guy with a spotless past getting to throw the first rock is now dead and buried.
And so the mounting storm over privacy law – far from being calmed by the long-awaited publication of the Neuberger report on Friday – rumbled on over the weekend, culminating on Monday, after yet another day of developments, court hearings and outpourings on Twitter, in an MP using Parliamentary privilege to flout a court order.
And what a strange place we have reached where sections of the tabloid press and a bunch of kiss 'n' tell stories have become rallying points for widespread civil disobedience and two attempts by Parliamentarians to use privilege to breach court orders, apparently because they didn't agree with them.
The Human Rights Act introduced a series of basic rights for people in this country – the code now being forcibly grafted onto public life by the press is that you should get some of those rights taken away if you're famous and have some failings in your personal life.
It also strikes me that many passengers of the Clapham omnibus and Twitter express are being amazingly naive about the tactics of considerable chunks of the tabloid press in pushing their agenda – in many cases for stories that there is not even an attempt to mount a public interest case for.
The wall-to-wall frenzy regarding injunctions has in the main been a self-serving campaign by sections of the press intent on being able to print whatever they like. Hey, that's business, and businesses will understandably push their commercial interests – but what has been more surprising is that so many people have surrendered to this dodgy narrative of rampant judges and the law being an ass because it won't just go along with whatever The Sun wants.
In this respect, this week's judgment from Mr Justice Eady outlining his reasons for once again refusing to lift that injunction is entirely logical and illustrates a man who has, if nothing else, a decent handle on the economics of publishing. Let's hope the High Court continues to frustrate these kind of stories. Even if it can only slow the torrent of revelations on Twitter, it will still limit the harassment, clip the commercial wings of the red tops and force them to run up escalating legal bills. Let's see how long they can keep this up once the public gets bored of injunction stories – and it will. (Stories about injunctions are, in publishing terms, methadone to the heroin of the kiss 'n' tell pieces themselves, but the hit will soon fade).
And while this fluff dominates the headlines, resources and attention are diverted from serious journalism and real issues – issues perhaps like the escalating scandal of phone-hacking at the News of the World… If you want some disobedience, it's time the nation stopped being suckers and started looking for some better targets.
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