The Public Figure Debate - do public figures deserve more protection from the press?
Entertainment & media
Comment | 1 October 2010
Let’s take a step back …… some people are public figures, some people are not. But nobody was born that way and just at what point does someone become a public figure or public property and does it matter anyway?
We have all made decisions in life about relationships, where to live, how to spend our money, our careers and our families. Those decisions may seem mundane but they are incredibly precious and private.
If you became a public figure, would you really want your private life opened up to the press? Not only your life, but that of your children? That would be the result if the position all of public figures being fair game which is advocated by some (including the media) was adopted.
A couple of weeks ago I was asked to be on the panel for an Intelligence Squared debate in front of 600 people plus the audience of BBC World News on which it was subsequently broadcast. The evening’s debate was called “Sex, drugs and videotapes: private lives of public figures deserve more protection from the press”. Max Mosley and I supported the motion and Tom Bower and Ken MacDonald QC opposed it. I will tell you the results of the debate at the end but first let me tell you why public figures deserve more protection from the press.
Laws do exist to prevent the misuse of private information and there are remedies in place to obtain injunctive relief and damages at trial.
Max Mosley was involved in one of the most recent privacy trials. He won and was awarded damages of £60,000 together with his costs. Even though he won, he questions whether this is really a remedy? A complaint about privacy, leading to a substantial public trial and being out of pocket on your legal bill. No wonder it is hard for us to persuade clients to rely on the English Justice System.
In practice when it comes to publication, the key question is not “is the article lawful?” rather “how much will it cost me if I get it wrong and is the wronged individual likely to sue?” In reality, this is a commercial decision. In the year that the News of The World published the article about Max Mosley, its profit was £44million. The sums the newspaper group had to pay over to Max Mosley were a “drop in the ocean” compared to that.
So what is the definition of a public figure? The definition includes “anyone who has gained prominence in the community, willingly or unwillingly”. You might take one definition of a public figure and say it is anyone paid by the State. That not might work for the Prime Minister - but is that really right for civil servants, firemen and nurses?
Tom Bower is an investigative journalist who is well known for his biographies about the rich and famous including Robert Maxwell, Richard Branson, Mohamed Al Fayed and Conrad and Lady Black, queried “what the rich and famous had to fear”. He thought that they were concerned that “if the public knew the truth about their [private lives] and didn’t like it, those people will lose the right to influence our lives”. He felt the courts here in England and Wales had gone too far in their protection in privacy.
But really, is it right for us to judge individuals on their sex lives? After all, that is what the debate was about. Is that really in the public interest – contributing to the debate within society – or is it just “interesting to the public”? Even the Daily Mail recently attacked "flag-bearers for the celebrity-mad, lascivious culture that has consumed the nation" (unfortunately it immediately undermined its principled stance by writing at the bottom of the article: "Have you got a story on a celebrity? Call the Daily Mail showbusiness desk @ ...")
Ken MacDonald QC was concerned about who the right of privacy really belonged to and he questioned whether enforcing the right to privacy was really about image control. His view was that the current laws would result in less investigation into powerful people.
However, Judges have made it clear that in relation to protecting reputation or image rights, injunctions to protect privacy will not be obtained.
The law of privacy will not affect investigative journalism. If there is public interest in revelations, those will still be permissible.
Everyone starts off with the right to a private life. Everyone has a private life – even public figures should be entitled to continue their private life. As it stands, the law on paper protects private lives. However, there are lots of examples where the law is simply ignored and more enforcement is therefore, needed.
The destruction from intrusions is unimaginable. Can anything be more upsetting or intrusive than William Hague being forced to talk about his wife’s miscarriages? And should entrepreneurs, well known only because they have been so successful, endure ongoing intrusions into family grief and be forced to see tragic photographs published over and over again – which is what has happened.
So, I did promise you the result of the debate. Well, given that journalists from many of the national ‘papers were in the room it’s not surprising that we unfortunately lost the debate. But, it wasn’t a landslide victory for the opposition. For the motion, in favour of more protection for the privacy of public figures were 200 votes. Against the motion were 278 votes and there were 22 abstentions. That’s 40% for the motion. Now I don’t think this is entirely representative of public opinion. It seems that it depends on who you ask. A survey by PR Week this week polled 3,000 members of the public and their response said that 60% of them agreed that the UK should have a statutory privacy law to prevent media intrusion into the lives of those in the public eye.
The current interest in the allegations of tapping into the telephones of well known individuals is keeping this debate at the forefront of people’s mind. Ignoring issues of illegality, do public figures really deserve that level of intrusion into their lives? Well one thing is for sure, this debate looks set to continue and we have yet to see what further revelations will come out about phone tapping from the police and Parliamentary inquiries.
First published in the Law Gazette - September 2010
