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Sex, Privacy and Max Mosley

What a court's decision on the motor-sport chief could mean for sex reporting in Britain.

Max Mosley Wins Damages Against The News of The World

Peter Macdiarmid / Getty Images

Victory: Mosley leaves the High Court in London after a ruling that he had 'a reasonable expectation of privacy in relation to sexual activities'

By William Underhill | Newsweek Web Exclusive

Jul 24, 2008 | Updated: 4:34 p.m. ET Jul 24, 2008

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Are Britain's rambunctious tabloids about to have their wings clipped? A London High Court ruling that a leading national newspaper breached the right to privacy of Max Mosley by publishing images of the Formula One boss at a sadomasochistic orgy has left journalists unsettled about the implications for their work.

Mosley, the 68-year-old president of the International Automobile Federation, won £60,000 ($120,000) in damages from the tabloid News of the World for a report about Mosley's sex session with five prostitutes. One of the women secretly filmed the bondage and caning encounter, which featured some of the participants in prison-style uniforms and was said by the newspaper to have a Nazi theme. However, the High Court judge ruled that there was "no public interest or other justification" for the publication of the pictures and the story, and he also dismissed the paper's suggestion that there were Nazi overtones to the session. Mosley, the son of fascist pro-Hitler British politician Oswald Mosley, welcomed the ruling as proof that his sexual behavior is a private matter. "I hope that my case will help deter newspapers in the U.K. from pursuing this type of invasive and salacious journalism," he said.

The impact on the downmarket British tabs remains to be seen. However, the decision underscored the fact that Britain, which has no formal privacy laws, is now subject to the more rigorous privacy protections in the European Convention on Human Rights. NEWSWEEK's William Underhill talked in London to Stephen Rigley, the news editor of the Sunday Express—a mass-market rival of the News of the World—about the likely effects of the Mosley decision.

NEWSWEEK: Were you surprised by the outcome of the trial?
Stephen Rigley: My own opinion was it always looked bleak for the News of the World after its key witness failed to turn up. But in the end I wasn't so much surprised as saddened.

Why do you say saddened?
This is a black day for the freedom of the press in Britain. The serious part is the implications of the decision in the future. We are talking about the introduction of a privacy law by the back door.

Will the outcome of the case actually change how you cover stories in the Sunday Express?
We are not quite in the same kiss-and-tell market as the News of the World, but it has implications for us all. There will be concern in the whole of Fleet Street. Whatever the judge may have said in court about the case not setting a precedent, it could in effect put a block on their investigations into sex or other scandals.

Member Comments

Posted By: Holly Garfield @ 07/26/2008 7:30:37 AM

Thank you for the 'compliment' of sorts. Unfortunately, freedom of the press does not guarantee quality of the press. I find just the opposite, that anyone who can find a big enough audience to stay in business will get published. No quality needed if that is what enough of the public wants. I was using profit to show that enough interest exists for those who want freedon AND quality to not get their way. By the way, who are you and I to define 'quality' for other people? Isn't that what freedom is about? If others used my definition of 'quality' in artwork a large number of artistic masterworks would be burned to ashes, and I guess the same applies to literature and other forms of expression. I guess that means I can apply my standards of quality in regard to the First Amendment freedoms to myself, and only myself. Just like everyone else in a free society. I think that means we can learn and teach ethics, but not legislate or restrict other's ethics. We can hold ourselves to our ethics, but not anyone else.
Posted By: Eagles_Heart @ 07/25/2008 11:27:25 PM

Holly Garfield's comments are accurate and well written.. and dang I wish they were not. I do not see this as a Right To Privacy matter at all. I am absolutely against "censorship," especially as pertains to the Witch Hunt (i.e., The Puritan Connection), but I firmly believe that Journalists, by virtue of their profession, are also "public figures" and leaders and more than any other entity, movers and shakers affecting public ethics and integrity.

Therefore, the profit motive mentioned as a rationale for "employing more journalists" I think is tacky.

If there are Journalists who have no concept of professionalism, no ability to write anything but scumbag material aimed at the worst of human nature, they should be drummed out of the corps... and pick up a motorized lawn mower to cut grass down to size instead of some hapless fool who has his own demons to deal with.

This is "journalism"??? .... stirring up phony baloney readers who do the "o my isn't that awful" drill and peruse ever word to the last dotted "i" and cross-eyed "t."

We have no right to be arbiters of human conduct in the public press. But we have a professional responsibility NOT to promote the worst of human nature as "entertainment." It's Shadenfreude at its worst.

And that was what I was taught in the UCLA School of Journalism... they called that course "The Ethics of Journalism."
Posted By: Holly Garfield @ 07/25/2008 8:01:47 PM

To ndrock: I don't know about Britian, but the US Constitution does not include any right to privacy. There is some implicit indications, but no expicit privacy rights in the US. Also the journalism in question is aimed directly at public figures almost exclusively. This kind of journalism has existed for a long time. The subjects of the journalists are almost all aware that the price of their lifestyle is that they become targets of the journalists. As such the privacy of all but a few public figures is not open for invasion. I, personally, share your views on privacy. As someone who has worked in the media for many years I am aware that there is enough interest in this kind of journalism to justify its existence. If the tabloids can sell enough papers, at the prices they charge, to pay the journalist and staff, and still turn a profit then many people don't share our viewpoint. But that is what freedom of the press is about.