Private Passions?

I'm confused. So what's new, I hear you ask. True. Britain's news media always leave me confused - although not half as confused as they seem to be as to what it is they're meant to be doing. Apparently, Max Moseley winning his libel case against the News of the World represents a direct threat to freedom of speech in the UK. Now, whilst one might expect a newspaper on the receiving end of such a judgement to say that sort of thing, today we had the extraordinary sight of a former Archbishop of Canterbury weighing in and saying that the judgement threatens public morality. Quite how a judgement saying that a tabloid lied when it accused someone of participating in a Nazi-themed sex orgy does either of those things isn't clear to me. Surely the issue here was one of privacy? What right does anyone, let alone a tabloid newspaper, have to secretly film an individual's private activities, conducted in private, and then expose them publicly?

That's the problem I have with all this. Regardless of the morality of Moseley's behaviour, at no point did the News of the World ever explain why it thought it was in any way justified in running the story. The usual defence for such stories is that it is in the public interest to run them. However, I fail to see what public interest was being served here. What consenting adults get up to in private is surely their business. OK, so I know that Moseley is a public figure in the sense that he is a prominent businessman and the son of Britain's most famous fascist, but it isn't as if he occupies a position in public life where his conduct is likely to influence others. If he was a politician, royalty, even a bishop, you could make a case that indulging in orgies, Nazi-themed or otherwise, was hardly the behaviour you'd expect of someone holding a position of such responsibility, and exposing their hypocrisy would be in the public interest. But in this case, all that the newspaper did was behave like a common or garden peeping Tom. Nobody cares what Max moseley does in private (provided it isn't illegal). Even if he had been having a Nazi-themed orgy (which he wasn't), it still wouldn't have been in the public interest. He doesn't hold public office, he hasn't set himself up as a role model for Britain's youth.

The ruling is important because it re-establishes the concept that there is a clear distinction between the private and the public in the UK, even for the rich and famous. In a society in which we are increasingly brow beaten into believing that surveillance is actually essential for our personal security, where it is OK for any semi-official agency to have access to your private data in the name of national security, it is essential that the idea of privacy is given greater protection. Oh, and to answer Lord Carey, the former Archbishop, Moseley's activities only became a 'threat' to public morality when they were splashed all across the front page by the News of the World. Until then, they were entirely private. If his privacy hadn't been invaded, it would never have been made public. The ruling is actually trying to ensure that this doesn't happen again, that people's private filth will remain just that; private. Besides, I hardly think that his sexual proclivities being exposed will lead to a spate of previously good Christians chaining each other up in basements and having their buttocks whipped raw. They've already doing that for years...