Daily Mail chief slams judge
Mr Justice Eady has come under attack from the Daily Mail editor-in-chief Paul Dacre for bringing privacy laws in by the back door.
Dacre, speaking at the Society of Editors’ annual conference in Bristol, criticised Eady J’s ruling that the News of the World (NotW) had breached Formula 1 chief Max Mosley’s privacy after secretly filming him taking part in a sex orgy (The Lawyer, 4 August ).
The Mail chief said the “arrogant and amoral” judgments of Eady J were “inexorably and insidiously” imposing a privacy law on the British Press.
“If Gordon Brown wanted to force a privacy law, he would have to set out a bill, arguing his case in both Houses of Parliament, withstand public scrutiny and win a series of votes,” said Dacre. “Now, thanks to the wretched Human Rights Act, one judge with a subjective and highly relativist moral sense can do the same with a stroke of his pen.”
Many in the legal profession, however, have come out in support of Eady J’s judgment.
Former Lord Chancellor Lord Falconer, senior counsel at Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, said it was not always acceptable for public figures’ private lives to be reported and Mosley’s situation was on such case.
“Of course, if I’m acting hypocritically or I’m accountable, or there’s something that may affect what I do in my public life which emerges from my private life, then that should be published,” said Falconer.
The Guardian News & Media director of editorial legal services, Nuala Cosgrove, also put her weight behind Eady.
“Paul Dacre's speech was unfairly biased against Mr Justice Eady,” said Cosgrove. “It's true that he reserves the majority of the interesting cases to himself but surely a privacy law built up through judicial precedence is preferable to one legislated for by MPs whose self interest might outweigh public interest and freedom of expression.”
A spokesman from Judicial Communications Office said: “Judges determine privacy cases in accordance with the law and the particular evidence presented by both parties. Any High Court judgment can be appealed to the Court of Appeal.” Read the our feature on the tension between the UK press and the judiciary here.
View results 10 per page | 20 per page
Readers' comments (18)
Ian | 10-Nov-2008 3:24 pm
Just because he won't be able to sell as many papers
if he can't as easily fill them with the sordid details of the lives of others.
I think his stance is disgraceful and arrogant, effectively saying - "I should be able to spy on anyone's life and publish any detail I so choose in order to sell more papers, and anyone who stops me doing this is wrong."
Taking the Maz Mosley case as an example, why does anyone have a right to know about his session with a bevvy of dommes? It in no way affects me or the vast majority of the British public and we should have no right (or ideally even desire) to know about such goings on, and I can think of no good reason why we should effectively be allowed to spy on the private lives of others in cases like these.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Gideon Benaim, Schillings partner | 10-Nov-2008 3:56 pm
Misinformation
It was not Eady J but the Government that brought privacy laws into the UK.
Also, the most important significant case on privacy to date was Campbell v MGN. That went all the way to the House of Lords and Eady wasn't even on the case at first instance. It was Morland J.
In fact the key cases including McKennit and Douglas have all gone to higher courts than the Mosley case.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Charlie Chalk | 10-Nov-2008 4:00 pm
Dacre was right
Privacy is a big issue and the Human Rights Act just isn't clear enough about where newspapers and their targets stand.
So a powerful judge is bound to stamp their mark on the territory and effectively create their own law. To get more balance we need a steer from the government.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
François | 10-Nov-2008 4:07 pm
Self serving but with a point
Every time press insiders make a haughty and moral speech you know you are in for a laugh.
This is probably the most self-serving example in recent years and 'saving newspapers' (by allowing them to print lies) has little correlation with diversity of opinion or sources of information. Which age does this guy live in?
I thought the more interesting point was the one about juries: if I understand correctly, the only reason why Mosley won was because one of the witnesses refused to testify on the Nazi angle of the piece. Anyone who actually saw the video clip will be in no doubt about the intent.
Mosley being a lawyer, he fought (and won) with lawyer's weapons, but this should not detract from the fact that a jury would have most certainly found against him. Therefore the NoW was probably right to expose the story in the first place... for once!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
David Engel, Addleshaw Goddard | 10-Nov-2008 4:25 pm
Has Dacre actually read the Mosley judgment?
Mr Dacre appears to have forgotten/overlooked the fact that there is always a public interest defence to a claim for invasion of privacy. In other words, if the purpose of the article really is to expose wrongdoing in the public interest, the press need have nothing to fear from the laws of privacy. This is all made crystal clear by Eady J in the Mosley judgment. The only articles that will be prevented are those which invade a person's privacy without good reason (which does not include increasing newspaper sales).
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Loreena McKennitt | 11-Nov-2008 3:13 am
Daily Mail Chief slams judge
As the “Canadian folk singer” mentioned in Mr Dacre’s speech I would offer the follow observations.
The fallacy Mr Dacre would like to propagate is that I did not challenge the contents of Ms Ash’s book. Like many, (but not all) of his media colleagues on both sides of the Atlantic , it is clear he has not spent much time reading Eady J’s judgment of this trial.
Of the many matters which were challenged in Ms Ash’s book , the most interesting was with respect to a property dispute. Central to Ms Ash’s “story” and her public interest defense, it was discovered that Ms Ash had “beefed up” 8 witness statements in order to establish a false case against me upon which she would breach my privacy and leverage my reputation through media interest. (A fact yet to be reported by any media ).
Needless to say, her public interest defense failed. Eady J speaks to this in para 106 to 128 of his judgment.
The trial and appeal judgments can be viewed at: http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2005/3003.html
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWCA/Civ/2006/778.html
As the editor of the Daily Mail and editor- in -chief of the Mail group and, if I am correct in understanding, now chairman of the Press Complaints Commission’s Editor’s Code of Practice Committee, one can only hope Mr Dacre will employ greater veracity of fact and balanced reporting than illustrated in his speech, clearly intended to inform or influence other editors.
As for Eady J, it is worrisome that the commercial media would embark upon such a proactive attack with the intentions to chill those serving in our justice systems without having done more responsible homework.
A careful read of Eady’s J judgments of recent cases will reveal he has taken great care not to compromise the media’s ability to pursue matters serving the true public’s interest. He has simply separated them from the public’s prurient interests. As I mentioned in Mr. Greenslade’s blog a year and half ago, http://www.quinlanroad.com/newsandviews/privacy-introduction.asp although our judicial systems may not be perfect, ‘trial by media’ is greatly worse.
I hope this assists in a better understanding of McKennitt v Ash, and more importantly adds light to the much bigger issue of media accountability in our democratic societies.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
Elitist | 11-Nov-2008 5:06 am
Loathsome rag
The idea that we should take lessons in public morals (or anything associated with decency) from that loathsome rag known as the Daily Mail is risible. Its narrow-minded, xenophobic and nasty views are a disgrace to the British press and the UK as a whole.
On a lighter note, Eady's judgement was in the finest tradition of judicial archness - his description of Mosley having his bottom shaved by his lady friends (paragraph 56 or 57, if memory serves me correctly) gave me one of the biggest laughs I've had for some time.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
ColinGavaghan, Glasgow | 11-Nov-2008 9:59 am
What dacre really wants...
... is a return to the halcyon, pre-HRA days when Gordon Kaye could be photographed, comatose in his hospital bed, by a Sunday Sport 'journalist', and the High Court was powerless to act because English law did not recognise a privacy right.
Certainly, the judiciary has been 'creative' in manufacturing a privacy right with horizontal application - the ECHR and the HRA are primarily about protecting citizens from the state, not from each other, but confidentiality law has effectively been rewritten to bring just such a right into being.
But who - apart from 'journalists' who make their living trawling through bins and peering through letter-boxes, and the editors who publish them - would really prefer it otherwise?
François is correct, though, that Eady, J's judgment in the Mosley case was pretty arbitrary. Why would it have been in the public interest to disclose MM's (putative) nazi-themed fetishes, but not his more generic German military-themed predelictions? Who could have predicted that the line would be drawn there?
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
John Flood | 11-Nov-2008 4:28 pm
Eady come, Eady go
As Private Eye has pointed out--and it's not a friend of the Daily Mail--Eady appears to have gone overboard in libel suits. England has now become the forum of choice for anyone anywhere in the world to launch a libel action. One result is that the US is legislating to prevent such judgments from being enforceable in the US courts. Free speech is being strangled. It's time to rein him in.
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment
graham atkins - atkins solicitors | 11-Nov-2008 5:16 pm
daily mail chief slams judge
oh dear, poor tabloid editors cant publish every detail about a persons private life without fear of legal action. what a dreadful state of affairs. havent you noticed how the tabloids have cleaned up their act and there are no kiss and tell stories anymore?! of course not. the law of confidence / right to a private life has simply been extended to cover the worst excesses of the popular press. And they still get away with it as many cant afford to sue them.
Was lunch a pile of sour grapes washed down with much spilt milk prior to this self-serving rant?!
Unsuitable or offensive? Report this comment