Andrew Marr should be congratulated for pursuing just cause with super-injunction

Posted by Cody Chalmers on Friday, July 1, 2011 · Leave a Comment 

Andrew Marr has operated as a journalist for a long time, so he’d have seen it coming as soon as he took out his ‘super-injunction’ back in 2008.

Yes, Marr’s prolonged punishment this week was to have the belated news of his affair with a fellow journalist hog almost as many headlines as the Royal Wedding. It’s been a good old kicking from peers in the press and other assorted gawpers all reliably pig-ugly in personality.

No doubt about it: this was a revenge mission on the part of the papers. Even if it was decided that he deserved the cruel jibes and judgement attitudes, this factor still came very much second-best compared to the level of indignation that has been caused within the media by the fact that Marr had the temerity to try and keep a lid on a scandal that threatened to rip apart from his family.

But for those who care to actually consider his point of view rather than rushing to blind judgements, he had his personal priorities dead right, and surely no-one can deny that. Marr used the tools at his disposal to protect those he cares about. Perhaps he prevented some salacious headlines in the process that might have in some sense constituted the truth. So what? They would have been – and now are – completely unnecessary when there’s plenty of news of actual consequence to cover instead.

Those accusations of hypocrisy? There’s been no accusations that what Marr may or may not have got up in any way affected how he carried out his role for the BBC, which is very different from publically elected politicians caught in compromising positions that have betrayed the trust of their electorate.*

But then it’s the same with the “married entertainer” or “well respected gardener” or “iconic sportsperson” or “homely maiden” or whichever other public figure is being referred to in such a manner at the moment when it comes to discussion of their apparently disgraceful follies, as if a newspaper refers to them by anything other than a completely oblique description then all said copies of said rag shall instantaneously shrivel and self-combust, nothing left except a small puff of acrid black smoke due to the legal gagging order.

Yes, they’ve applied to the courts to get news suppressed – but why this notion that celebrities have no right to privacy by right of law, when on the other hand everyone’s also gone completely tonto this week when they realised that their mobile phone might have tracked GPS information about where they’ve been?

It’s icky snooping, that’s all it is, and for no good reason either other than natural curiosity. We guard secrets like they’re our own property, which in a way they are, especially given how much they define us. And if they are like property, no wonder people can become so covetous over others, regardless of how much they actually deserve to have them.

Needing to know what others are up to might be understandable, it might even be “human nature”, but gaining access to that information still isn’t an unalienable human right. If a judge rules it illegal to spread certain details, deciding that the harm caused doesn’t merit the reasons for reportage, then perhaps that’s as it should be. Just because it doesn’t suit you, doesn’t mean that it’s not the correct course of action. If you’re doubtful, check your own feelings on how happy you’d be for someone to disseminate the contents of your diary over public radio, or publish details from your medical records in a tabloid spread, or sell the credit details that’d you entered into your Playstation 3 to fraudsters. It’s all information that you don’t think others have the right to possess and then divulge to others.

Now, I’m really hoping that you’ve not just thought: “Oh, but those are different cases entirely. These people acted wrong, so they deserve it.” Well, they might have countenanced the risks of their behaviour, thought about what was at stake, but that doesn’t mean that they had full realisation of just how it would play out. How it would feel. It was their fault, but the fallout hurts others, and it seems that in the case of Marr and co it’s those “others” who the judges have been thinking about. You know, the children. The spouses. Who do these robed and bewigged buffoons think they are, protecting the innocent and all that? Don’t they see the baying public want their pound of flesh, even if not from those who have signed a contract?

Yes, Marr was foolish. Deeply, utterly, shamefully foolish to put the happiness of his family, his children at risk for the sake of a tawdry fling. But there’s a difference between making a stupid mistake and wilfully hurting others, and that’s what the press propose here, by fighting super-injunction laws under such circumstances.

We don’t need to be poking our noses in such circumstances, and if the media at large weren’t allowed to, just imagine: there might be a bit more space for some real news! It might afford us less tittle tattle for water cooler conversations, but as well as protecting the innocents at these scandals’ hearts it might also spare us our sanity. For another week or two, anyway…

 

* And as to whether Marr encouraged other more ethically dubious super-injunctions to be applied for and then successfully attained – well, that’s where the judge comes into it, surely? To make a decision on a case-by-case basis given the specific facts of the matter? I don’t think Marr suddenly walked out the door of the court that day a few years back and said: “Come on all ye wretches, now no tabloids will get thy grubby paws on thee. Rejoice!” And even if he did, you’d still have to have a little bit of a grudging admiration for the poor old sod.

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