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Artist News Legal Media
The Sun tries to overturn injunction banning reporting on celebrity threesome
By Chris Cooke | Published on Thursday 14 April 2016
Three appeal judges will tomorrow hear an application from Sun publisher News UK to overturn an injunction banning the tabloid from publishing a story about a celebrity’s “extramarital sexual activities”.
An injunction banning the UK media from reporting on this story on privacy law grounds was issued in January, but that court ruling only applies to England and Wales. As a result, Scottish tabloid the Sunday Mail ran with the story last weekend, but only in print, while US and Canadian publications have also run the claims that have been against, and named, the individual at the heart of the story.
According to The Guardian, when applying for the original injunction, the celebrity’s lawyers argued that “publication of the story wouldn’t serve any public interest”, while the judge considering the request said publication would “generate a media storm” that would be “devastating” for the claimant, and result in increased press intrusion into the lives of the unnamed celebrity’s children.
The case again forces judges to balance a celebrity’s right to privacy with a newspaper’s right to free speech, while also putting the spotlight back on the weaknesses of privacy injunctions that can only ever apply to one jurisdiction in an age when media from all over the world floods into any one country over the net.
