'News of the World's' bungled handling of the sordid sex story means there is little sympathy for it among its peers, wriets Roy Greenslade
THE JUDGE who yesterday ruled that the motor racing chief Max Mosley had suffered gross intrusion into his privacy by the News of the World commented in his judgment: "There is nothing 'landmark' about this decision." Mr Justice Eady was right in a legalistic sense. He dealt with the case in similar terms to those that he and other British judges have applied in libel trials. He decided against the paper on the grounds that there was no public interest to justify publishing the story.
However, he was also wrong as far as the press is concerned because every privacy action is being seen as something of a landmark. Editors and journalists in Britain are growing increasingly alarmed at the development of a law that arrived, in their view, by the back door with the adoption in 2000 of the European Convention on Human Rights.
So it was no surprise that the News of the World should have reacted to losing the case and being ordered to pay damages of €76,000 by issuing a statement in which it claimed: "Our press is less free today . . . our media are being strangled by stealth."
Even if editors agree, it is doubtful if they have any sympathy for the News of the World because of the catalogue of errors in the way it handled its sordid story about Mosley's participation in a sadomasochistic sex orgy with five prostitutes.
One of the women was paid by the paper to covertly film the session, which took place in a private house, on the understanding that Mosley - son of the fascist leader Oswald Mosley and Hitler sympathiser Diana Mitford - had requested that it should have a Nazi theme.
The supposed public interest justification lay in revealing that a man of tainted parentage who was now on the governing body of Formula One motor racing had a morbid interest in Nazism linked to depraved sexual practices.
In fact, the evidence published in the paper in March under the headline "F1 boss has sick Nazi orgy", backed up by some video footage on its website, was inconclusive. There was no proof positive of the Nazi theme.
Then it emerged during the trial that none of the German dialogue had been translated, that the woman who sold the story had not signed an agreement to publish and that the News of the World's editor, Colin Myler, had not bothered to view the whole video. It also became clear that the paper had equated German speech and German accents with Nazism, a lingering prejudice in Britain ever since the second World War.
In deciding that there had been an unlawful intrusion into Mosley's privacy, the judge said: "There was no public interest or other justification for the clandestine recording, for the publication of the resulting information and still photographs, or for the placing of the video extracts on the News of the World website - all of this on a massive scale.
"I accept that such behaviour is viewed by some people with distaste and moral disapproval, but in the light of modern rights-based jurisprudence that does not provide any justification for the intrusion on the personal privacy of the claimant." It was a comprehensive rejection of the News of the World's defence. But it might prove to be much more problematic for the paper in future. Many of its sleazy stock-in-trade articles are kiss-and-tell stories about minor celebrities without any discernible public interest.
The implication of the Mosley judgment is that such people might well be able to sue for invasions into their privacy in future.
But the judge stressed that other newspapers carrying out responsible journalism in a responsible way had nothing to fear. It cannot seriously be suggested, he said, "that the case is likely to inhibit serious investigative journalism into crime or wrongdoing, where the public interest is more genuinely engaged". So claims that the ruling will have a chilling effect on reporting appear to be wide of the mark. Journalism will continue to thrive as long as a robust public interest defence remains effective.
As for Mosley, the court victory is surely tinged with the undeniable fact that he has been humiliated and his reputation is in tatters. Nor will it guarantee that he can hold on to his job.
Given the grubby nature of the story, the News of the World probably imagined that Mosley would not be prepared to suffer further embarrassment in order to clear his name. It was, among its many other errors, a severe miscalculation.