Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Alan Rusbridger, Editor, The Guardian, Ian Hislop, Editor, Private Eye, John Witherow,
Editor, The Sunday Times, and Jonathan Grun, Editor of the Press Association—Oral
evidence (QQ 162–209)
doing. It may be that there is no public interest at all; it may be that there is. I don’t know.
But that is what I would like to see in what they call this range, which says, more or less, “It
would be reasonable to do that”, and it also does not interfere in the way you do it. It can
be that they do not say that you should not put this picture in, or that headline, or whatever,
but say, “That story shouldn’t be there”. Again, on the whole I am for as much publication
as possible, so I would have a much broader defence of as much free speech as we can
possibly muster.
John Witherow: I do not know about the Sienna Millar case, but picking up on the
point of a famous person and whether they lose some right to privacy: they try and control
the agenda when they want their news out there, and they do it using agents or whatever
means to get the sort of publicity they want that forwards their career and makes them
more money. And then when a story emerges that is not in their interests they try to use
any methods to stop that. You have to think, “Is that right, if they are benefiting from all
that publicity, but when there is something negative they then close it down?” It does not
seem really fair.
Jonathan Grun: I think that just because you are in the public eye does not mean
that you are fair game. I think it is when the image that you present of yourself in public is at
odds with the way that you behave in private. That, I think, is when it is legitimate for
stories to be written about those people. It is a fact that you can be a celebrity in this
country and behave so badly but so openly that you almost inoculate yourself against
coverage, simply because you clearly have nothing to hide and therefore you are not much
of a story.
John Witherow: The tabloid press would say about us that we are all very highminded
and we hold our noses above this sort of things, but as soon as they publish one of
these stories, our newspapers are only too happy to pick it up and run with it.
Ian Hislop: That’s true.
Q1499 Paul Farrelly: This Committee is called the Joint Committee on Privacy
and Injunctions, but when it comes to injunctions I feel it is wholly artificial not to talk about
confidence, which has been mentioned before. Ian, you referred to Napier and Pressdram;
that was the first part of my two-parter that involved Trafigura as a parliamentary question.
I would have thought that, to coin a phrase, a one-eyed Albanian, in both those cases, as a
judge, would have been able to see from a sheet of A4 that the public interest was served by
both of those stories being published, particularly if you had proper opportunity to present
your side of A4. The question I have is in two parts as well: do you think in those cases the
judges apply any test of public interest at all before granting an interim injunction; and do
you feel they give you the opportunity to put your case before you’re getting involved and
spending hundreds of thousands of pounds?
Ian Hislop: My experience was that they were too quick to grant and seemed to be
less favourably inclined towards the press’s arguments in those cases. Because these privacy
and confidence things came over from family law and cases where it really matters—I am not
saying these cases do not matter, I am being flippant, but cases where it is really obvious to
see there is harm and distress and whatever—they moved that agenda over, so that they
were again too ready to grant injunctions, in the case of confidence and privacy. I think what
has happened is they have stood back a little and thought that the freedom of the press is
worth a little more consideration against Article 8, or against the confidence.
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