UK media ban on celebrity affair upheld
Print Edition
BRITAIN’S Supreme Court yesterday upheld an injunction preventing the English press from naming a celebrity who was involved in a much publicized extra-marital threesome.
The ruling means media in England and Wales remain banned from naming the people involved, even though their names have been widely reported online since a US magazine published the story on April 6.
The case has stirred a wider debate about whether injunctions, court orders banning publication of private details, serve any purpose when stories can travel across jurisdictions at the click of a mouse.
In a 4-1 majority ruling, the Supreme Court said that even though the threesome story was easily accessible online, allowing publication in English newspapers would lead to a “media storm” with increased intrusion into the lives of the main protagonist, his spouse and their two young children.
London-based tabloids, which have a long history of publishing stories about the sex lives of celebrities, reacted with fury, with the Sun calling the ruling “draconian” and the Daily Mail branding it “ludicrous.”
The man at the center of the story and his spouse were described in court documents as “well-known individuals in the entertainment business.”
The couple testified to a lower court that originally granted the injunction that theirs was an open relationship in which extra-marital flings were acceptable and did not call into question their commitment to each other and their children.
The Sun on Sunday, which bought the story from the other participants in the threesome, argued it was in the public interest because it exposed the couple’s public image of marital commitment as hypocritical.
“There is no public interest (however much it may be of interest to some members of the public) in publishing kiss-and-tell stories or criticisms of private sexual conduct, simply because the persons involved are well-known,” said Supreme Court judge Lord Mance, reading a summary of the ruling.
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