Why I welcome the Mosley privacy ruling
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Yesterday Max Mosley, the president of the International Automobile Federation (FIA), which manages Formula 1 racing, won £60,000 from the News of the World which printed a story about his enjoying some sort of sado-masochistic orgy with prostitutes with a Nazi theme. The suit was not for libel – he did not deny the central claim, only the bit about the Nazi overtones – but for invasion of privacy. The News of the Screws complained that the British press was became less free yesterday because of privacy laws emanating from Europe. Boo hoo.
I am sure many people find it amusing that Max Mosley is so keen to disprove the Nazi overtones of his orgy, as if it made much difference to his reputation. I am sure the world divides into two groups of people on this subject: those for whom sexual acts involving prostitutes is immoral, and that once you get to that stage, what theme you use for your play hardly matters, and those for whom S&M is just one of many ways of getting pleasure, even if it’s not everybody’s cup of tea, and if dressing up as a Nazi turns you on, or being spanked by someone dressed as one does, so be it. If it were not for who Max Mosley’s parents were (Oswald Mosley, the leader of the British Union of Fascists during the 1930s, and his wife Diana Mitford), none of that would matter.
However, I think it is a good thing that people have a right to protect their privacy. The press – in the UK at least – are well-known for reporting stories about celebrities based on reports from so-called friends – who in a lot of cases simply do not exist, and are a ruse to hide a made-up or highly exaggerated story. I cannot think of anything worse than not being able to trust one’s close friends, being afraid that they will run to the gutter press to get some money for their betrayal. The last thing someone needs if they are in trouble is to be worrying about their affairs appearing on the front page of a major newspaper, even if they are famous for acting or music, or anything else.
Of course, the British press is also hamstrung by Britain’s tough libel laws, which in the words of George Monbiot in the Guardian last week, “are tilted so heavily against the defendant and involve such monumental costs that they amount, in effect, to censorship by private interests: a sedition law for the exclusive use of millionaires”, requiring the defendant to prove his innocence rather than requiring the plaintiff to prove falsehood. In recent years, the libel lawyers have turned to shutting down websites by simply threatening web hosting companies rather than actually challenging the authors. Is it not inconsistent that tabloids have licence to intrude on people’s private lives for profit, while genuine investigative journalism is stifled by a repressive libel law?
