The tantalizing front-page headline in Monday’s issue of The Telegraph of London reads “Super-injunction footballer ‘blackmailed’ over affair with Big Brother contestant.” And the story opens,
A premiership footballer who has taken out a gagging order over his alleged affair with Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas sought the injunction after she tried to blackmail him for (100,000 pounds), a court heard yesterday. The player, who cannot be named, said Imogen Thomas had told him she ‘needed’ the money and was being tracked by journalists.
The player is Ryan Giggs, a player for Manchester United. And while he cannot be named in British newspapers, no such rule applies to media in other countries. Should we be taking advantage of this allowance and printing his name? Forget for a moment that Giggs’ involvement in this matter is not a secret, as it’s been published in countless other outlets. The real question—and one that comes up quite often in England, where injunctions to keep potentially embarrassing stories from being printed are reportedly in place for dozens of celebrities—is whether a person’s right to privacy exceeds the public’s right to know. In England, privacy often wins out; in the United States, it rarely does. The consequence? If the rules in England applied here, Brett Favre’s name might never have been published in American media outlets, a courtesy that probably would not have been extended to Jenn Sterger.
“Men are doing it to protect their privacy,” said Hugh Grant. “Women don’t behave as badly as men, that is quite clear. Men are naughty.”
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To women who’ve been on the receiving end of this institutional hypocrisy—Imogen Thomas, for one—the English system of injunctions serves to protect the reputations of men at their direct expense.
“My name and reputation are being trashed while the man I had a relationship with is able to hide,” Thomas said following the imposition of the injunction. “What is more, I cannot even defend myself because I have been gagged. Where is the fairness in this? What about my reputation? If this is the way privacy injunctions are supposed to work, then there is something seriously wrong with the law.”
Hugh Grant, whose dalliance with prostitute Divine Brown was highly publicized in 1995, said recently on BBC’s Newsnight program that rich men need this kind of protection because they’re naughty by nature. He called the ability of men to file these injunctions “fabulous.”
“Men are doing it to protect their privacy,” said Grant. “Women don’t behave as badly as men, that is quite clear. Men are naughty.”
“If you take it as a fact of life they always have been—they’ve always been liable to be naughty—the question that arises is that if the man is successful or rich, [are they] in the public domain? I’d say absolutely not.”
Considering Grant’s own history in these matters, it’s no surprise that he thinks a celebrity’s private life is not the public’s business. And to a certain extent, we agree. But the fact is Grant was arrested for soliciting a prostitute, so he was treated (initially, anyway) the same way anyone else would have been under such circumstances: He was arrested, which created a police report; it was only a matter of time till that became public.
But what Grant is also arguing for is the right of men to not have their private lives (read: the ones that don’t produce police reports) become public fodder. In theory, we agree with that sentiment; in practice, however, it creates the kinds of problems associated with the English injunction system, where “between 30 and 40 celebrities, including several famous footballers, currently have legal protection,” while many of the women in these relationships are left to twist in the wind.
We weren’t thrilled to learn about Brett Favre allegedly texting photos of his penis to Jenn Sterger. But we would have been more offended if the headlines read, “Jenn Sterger receives pics of future Hall of Famer’s penis,” an incomplete picture that tarnishes her reputation while leaving the rich “naughty by nature” man to escape the consequences.
Rest assured, though, that media in some other country would have published Favre’s name, circumventing a system that is childish, out-of-date and hypocritical—i.e., what they have in England.
It’s getting even worse over here with dawn of the ‘super-injunction’. This not only prevents people from speaking out, but also prevents those that have been gagged from telling people that the restraint EXISTS. I’m as much in favour of a person’s right to privacy as anyone, and theoretically super-injunctions are available to anyone. In practice though, it is only the richest that can afford the time and the legal support to get these injunctions put in place. Money and gender are both hugely divisive factors. This is how we have such a huge class divide in this country. The… Read more »
It was her choice to go to the press and sell her story. If she hadn’t done that then her name wouldn’t be being trashed at the moment. Maybe the world would look a bit kinder on her if she hadn’t slept with a married man, tried to blackmail him, and then sold the story to the papers to try and make some money. I think everyone has a right to privacy, just because he picked a career in the public eye doesn’t mean that his entire life is suddenly everyone else’s business. If he become known as compaigning for… Read more »