Privacy versus Twitter - Only One Winner

The backlash is off.

Or at least, the one the Sage wrote about in my last post is. In fact the conventional media is due, and has received, a fair amount of sympathy amid the latest twists in the privacy saga.

Not everyone may have approved of the blasé fashion in which the name that everyone knew was finally ‘outed’ in the House of Commons earlier this week, but it sure saved a lot of journalists a lot of needless hassle and a lot of understandable frustration.

The situation over the weekend was nothing short of farcical – newspapers not allowed to report a story whose key players and storyline were known to most of the readership; football pundits not able to speculate about the effect of a sex scandal on the mindset of one of the leading stars of the national champions in the lead-up to the biggest club game in the sport.

Now his name is out – yet technically it would still be illegal for the Sage to name him here, as the futile injunction remains in place.

David Cameron must have been glad of the timing of Barack Obama’s state visit this week; otherwise this story could have rumbled on and mutated into quite a legislative conundrum for the government – divided as it is between a conservative instinct towards privacy and a liberal emphasis on freedom of speech.

Instead he was able to shoot the breeze on an early morning TV sofa, watched by next to no-one, and in doing so brush it aside until that favourite tool of his – the independent commission – makes his mind up for him long after the whole thing has blown over.

And onto the ping-pong and burger-flipping he went. Oh and a bit of that Libya and Afghanistan business, too… but I sense fewer people will remember that.

But this issue, I suspect, will not go away.

How can a court order constricting a country’s professional journalists have any credibility whatsoever when it can so quickly, easily, openly and nonchalantly be flouted by users of a global forum who see themselves as below the law, by motor-mouthed elected representatives under the impression of being above the law, and by newspaper editors working beyond the geographical reach of the law?

What does it mean for anyone in the public eye wishing to retain a modicum of privacy? And what implications might it have for the internet in terms of regulation and legal jurisdiction?

On the former, unfortunately the best response may be – don’t even try it. The current scandal has gained far more momentum and generated much stronger interest and emotion because of the attempt by its villain to use his position and wealth to buy his way to legal protection, than anything that could possibly have been sustained by the simple fact of the alleged affair itself.

In contrast to the continental political culture of ‘kiss and don’t tell’ exposed in the fallout from the Strauss-Kahn case, a British politician may have found such infidelity difficult to dismiss; I doubt footballers are held in quite such high esteem – the current England captain saw to that.

On the latter, however, all will be well in a few days. High on the agenda of this weekend’s G8 summit – the internet. Google, Facebook, Twitter and the like must be quaking.

Privacy and the Media - Only One Winner

The backlash is on.

Yesterday the Daily Telegraph was reprimanded by the Press Complaints Commission for its use of subterfuge when its journalists posed as constituents of ministers and secretly recorded their meetings.

The PCC ruled that the paper did not have sufficient evidence to launch such an operation and that consequently the MPs were asked a number of questions aimed at establishing “on which subject they might say something newsworthy” – this, according to the judgement, amounted to “disproportionately intrusive attention”.

The sting came to light a week before Christmas last year when the paper published Business Secretary Vince Cable’s defiant ‘declaration of war’ on Rupert Murdoch regarding News Corporation’s bid to take full ownership of BSkyB.

The revelation led to Mr Cable being relieved of his oversight of media regulation – and the Telegraph claims that the public interest served by this end justifies the means by which it was reached. The PCC disagreed. It’s a fascinating debate.

Mr Cable, of course, welcomed the decision, saying it preserved the relationship between MPs and their constituents. The editor of the Telegraph took a different view, bemoaning the implications for investigative journalism and the accountability of powerful figures.

Ironically, the judgement came on the same day that former motorsport boss Max Mosley suffered defeat in his attempt to force newspapers to inform the subject of a scandal prior to its publication. (And all this at a time when tabloids have placed the term ‘super-injunction’ firmly in the nation’s vocabulary.)

The Sage warned at the time about the growing tendency of newspaper journalists to stop at nothing in their self-declared obligation to reveal all about those in the public eye and in particular about the effect on the relationship between representatives and the represented – although the same principle applies to idols and idolisers in any context.

In truth, Mr Mosley’s vision would have been a step too far, and his moral authority was anyway compromised in the light of his own humiliating tabloid scandal three years ago – although he did win a (less-reported) court case shortly after that ruled that his privacy had been breached.

Mosley, of course, is not the only one to have won such a morally significant victory, but as he himself lamented this week, once the story is out, you can’t “un-report” it.

And it is for that reason that red-top editors – who inevitably interpreted Mosley’s defeat as an all-encompassing vindication of their shoddy tactics and dubious ethics – will not be deterred from setting their crosshairs and taking their shots, whatever legal music they might belatedly have to face later on.

And of course, the most depressing argument used to support newspapers’ freedom to ‘out’ those who have strayed from the standards that are hypocritically expected of them is that even if 20th-century media doesn’t, 21st-century media will anyway. God bless Twitter.

The backlash is on… just don’t expect it to achieve anything.

A Lot to Play For... Again

Tomorrow, almost a year to the day after last year’s historic general election, voters across Britain go to the polls again. Whether it’s to elect MSPs, Assembly members or local councillors and/or decide upon how Westminster votes are counted in future, every registered adult in the UK has the opportunity to fulfil at least one democratic duty.

Of course, the likelihood of those duties being fulfilled will be heavily influenced not only by each individual’s perception of the significance of their ballot, but by how many ballots they can cast – venturing to the polling station to be one ‘yes’ or ‘no’ among millions becomes a much more appealing prospect if the identity of local representatives is simultaneously at stake.

And it is this curious logic of electoral turnout that is perhaps the single major obstacle to predicting the result of the referendum on the Alternative Vote. Opinion polls have thus far failed to take into account the theory that turnout in Scotland and Wales may be significantly higher than in London and other election-free areas of England.

On the other hand, voters hoping to see the Nationalists complete their overall majority at Holyrood may be somewhat nonplussed about the conduct of future elections in which they may play no part.

Another thing that is less than clear is simply the extent to which the electorate in general is interested in or educated about the referendum issue.

The recent holiday season will have done nothing to kick-start a campaign that has largely been played out in the margins of a media industry pre-occupied with events in Libya, Japan and now Pakistan, and over the heads of people far more concerned about their future employment than future elections.

All in all, then, turnout can be expected to be both widely varied and generally low, which means Britain could find itself stumbling its way through landmark democratic change. Just because AV is not PR does not mean its introduction – in the event – should be taken lightly.

Indeed it may prove to be a first step towards a more proportional system. If, however, the Noes outweigh the Ayes, interpretation will be all important – a vote of confidence in the current system and a rejection of change, or simply an electorate unconvinced by the ‘alternative’ on offer?

And what about the coalition government, whose two leading figures are poles apart on the issue? Both insist, of course, that they will accept the result with good grace but both have stuck their necks out by playing prominent roles in the respective campaigns and – in Cameron’s case, at least – by refusing to condemn the personal attacks that have defined much of the rival camps’ tactics.

The stakes are high for all three party leaders – a No vote would undermine the Lib Dems on their flagship policy, whilst strengthening the Prime Minister and representing an early electoral defeat for Miliband; a Yes vote would boost Labour and Nick Clegg, and anger backbench and grassroots Tories who will not bow to a leadership claiming it as a necessary coalition concession.

Labour, meanwhile, have other key battles to fight. Anything other than sweeping council victories for a sole major opposition party in a period of austerity will be seen as a rejection of the party’s economic policy and credibility, while winning back overall control in Wales and especially in Scotland will be far from easy.

You may not have heard or read much about it this time, but there’s a lot to play for at the polls once again.