At the risk of appearing to display a naive and fundamental misunderstanding of what drives the tabloid press, my initial reaction to the story leading most of today’s red-tops was simply “why print a story missing crucial information?”
I am aware, of course, that the incident in question contains perhaps the perfect ingredients for these publications. “World famous actor in sex romps with Rooney’s vice girl” splashes the Daily Express; “Roo hooker’s romps with a married actor” reveals the Daily Mirror; the Sun, meanwhile, leads with the relatively restrained “Rooney hooker bedded married actor”.
The headlines are intriguing, and naturally invite the reader to further investigate the story. Buy this newspaper, the front page implores, and your insatiable thirst for celebrity gossip will be at least temporarily quenched.
Except, of course, that the headlines tell as much of the story as anyone is allowed to know. The actor involved in this case is protected by an injunction that prevents the press from revealing his identity, in turn denying readers the juicy details of the “scandal”.
Not being particularly interested in such celebrity gossip (although rather perversely perhaps, I did eagerly await last season’s encounter between Manchester City and Chelsea, where the former’s Wayne Bridge came up against John Terry, who had been revealed as having “bedded” Bridge’s ex-partner), I cannot get too wound up the injunction. Indeed, I was more drawn to the adjacent front-page story in the Express, another hyperbolic rant about the European Union.
The increased frequency of such injunctions has become ever more evident. More disturbingly still, however, were the recent revelations of far more powerful court gagging orders. Known as hyper-injunctions, they are so far-reaching that they may even prevent members of the public from speaking to their MPs about the issues to which they refer.
Fortunately for our democracy, parliamentary privilege, which prevents MPs speaking in the House of Commons from being taken to court for what they say there, has been invoked to get around these scandalous measures.
Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming should thus be commended for bringing one such issue into the public domain. The High Court passed an order five years ago, Hemming revealed, in which the full weight of legal power was used to close down every route that a constituent could potentially take in order to broadcast his claims.
And what is this issue, one that apparently justifies unelected judges from deciding that its very existence should not be revealed? It concerns the paint used on ships, which, it is alleged, reacts with sea water to produce toxic by-products.
Does this really justify the full weight of the English legal system being enacted to deny an individual a platform upon which to detail his accusation? Is it morally acceptable for him or her not even to be able to discuss the matter with “members of Parliament, journalists and lawyers”, as the High Court order makes plain?
Of course not. Hyper-injunctions represent a new threat to the values of liberty that we should hold dear as a nation. We cannot, surely, tolerate a society in which a citizen is denied the right even to speak to his or her elected representative. It is almost laughable that in this case the individual was even handed a two-week suspended jail sentence merely for consulting a lawyer about whether or not to bring the case to court.
Perhaps the most dangerous facet of this affair is the fact that the judge’s orders prevent any chance of appealing the verdict. There is literally no authority to which the recipient of the injunction can legally turn, and only the constitutional quirk of parliamentary privilege has allowed the sorry episode to become a matter of public knowledge.
It is a good thing that it has. This is a matter that puts no less than a basic right – that of free speech – at risk, and represents, too, a threat to the elected democratic system in which we place our trust. A worrying precedent has been set, one that is overwhelmingly more disquieting than not being able to identify the latest cheating celebrity.
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