Invasion of privacy
This month, The Guardian newspaper managed to overturn a gagging order they received when they attempted to report an MP’s question in Parliament.
If you haven’t heard, it was regarding base metal company Trafigura, and the effect of an oil dump in the Ivory Coast on thousands of people. The allegation was that Trafigura knew that the waste dumped was hazardous, and their law firm Carter-Ruck worked feverishly to impose a super injunction on The Guardian to prevent them from reporting it. Twitter almost crashed due to the mass response after the editor, Alan Rusbridger, tweeted what had happened. Instantly people began consulting the legality of Carter-Ruck’s actions, legal loopholes, questions of ethics and general pandemonium occurred, eventually forcing the order to be lifted. Rusbridger called the injunction “a fantastic own goal”.
So a victory for free speech against hard odds, it would seem. But the fact that Carter-Ruck were able to impose this order at all is frightening. One need only look at the Guardian’s cryptic front page published while the order was still active, to see that it effectively rubs out any kind of truth or gravitas in a news story. But how many other blocked stories are out there, protected by no end of legal armour? The super injunction was created to protect the privacy and integrity of the individual, so why is such a law being utilised by amoral multinational corporations? Will it be used again? Has it already been used? The worrying suggestion is; if you have enough money and have the right lawyers, you can prevent journalists from reporting anything you do, from racy photos to money laundering.
After F1 boss Max Mosley won a High Court legal battle against the News of the World for invasion of privacy, UK privacy law has been expanded and made stricter, making it much more difficult for journalists to print stories. UK Libel law for newspapers used to state that newspapers could publish, and then have to justify their actions if it was contested by a third party. Now “privacy” can be substituted legally for libel. An individual or organisation can approach a judge, ask them not to print something, and that’s that. Nothing is tested, nothing is challenged. Injunctions stifle the idea of a free press, dampening down peoples ability and desire to run difficult or controversial stories. They are instead faced with massive costs and a long legal battle, by which time the story will have been rendered irrelevant or watered down.
Newspapers like The Sun can afford this. They have a phenomenal amount of money dedicated to dealing with issues of legality, but newspapers like The Guardian and smaller publications like Private Eye can’t afford to throw money at court proceedings, meaning it is easier to back down than fight their corner. How can we ever have a free press when law and bureaucracy threatens to overrule our right to report the facts as we see them?
Joseph Stashko-Adamaszek
