Inforrm’s Blog provides a transcript of Lord Pannick’s Speech to the Court of Human Rights in the case brought by former Formula One president Max Mosley. Mosley’s sex life become front-page fodder and subjected him to embarrassment and ridicule. Rather than slinking away, Mosley has fought to get greater recognition for a right to privacy.
Mr President, members of the Court:
The News of the World newspaper sells about 2.8 million copies on an average Sunday, and it is read by about 15% of the adult population of the United Kingdom.
It trades in buying and then selling the intimate sexual secrets of the rich and famous.
Very capable journalists, who no doubt dreamt at University of being a foreign correspondent in Paris, Bonn or Rome devote their working lives to destroying the private lives of those who have, or rather had, a personal, sexual secret the revelation of which will titillate the reader.
Why such journalistic intrusion into the sex lives of the victims should be so popular in the United Kingdom, when it is a phenomenon unknown in such intensity elsewhere in Europe, would require a psychological study.
But this is a court of law.
What is clear is the impact of this type of journalism.
Read more on Inforrm’s Blog.