Harry Potter and the Hounds of Hell

Harry Potter and the Hounds of Hell

2008-05-16
Member News

We have been keeping tabs, over the last few years, of the perpetual fight between the forces of privacy and free speech, the former being represented by a multitude of celebrities and the latter by various tabloids and the paparazzi. Listeners to Today programme will have heard recently the comments of the Duchess of York concerning the treatment of her daughter Beatrix. Naomi Campbell famously went 12 rounds with the press and came off second best.

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But sometimes the target can bite back. One such example was the case of David Murray v. Big Pictures Limited, where, in August last year, Mr Justice Patten ruled in favour of the paparazzi business Big Pictures and against David Murray, an 18-month-old child pictured in his stroller on the streets of Edinburgh on Monday morning in November 2004.

?Edinburgh? is the clue there of course ? home to the author Mrs Joanne Murray (aka. JK Rowling) and her family. The picture taken featured David with his parents and was featured in many newspapers and tabloid celebrity magazines around the world. One such publication was the Daily Express, which juxtaposed the picture with a quote from JK Rowling of some years earlier in relation to motherhood and family life.

The Murrays objected to the use of the photograph, in particular to the fact that it featured an image of David, and took action. The claim against Big Pictures was struck out, chiefly on the basis that the Murrays, when walking down a public street, could not have ?a reasonable expectation of privacy?. How could the Murrays regard such an activity, carried out in the full view of the passing public, as private?

It seemed to me that there must be a difference between the transient memory of the passing public (even if, on returning to their homes or workplaces, they whisper to their friends ?guess who I just passed on the street???) and the long lens of a paparazzo camera that records the activity and communicates it via a network of distribution channels to a worldwide audience.

Fortunately for wee David, his mother is not merely another d-list celebrity, but a woman of considerable wealth and power unwilling to let the point go. The Murrays appealed the decision, which was itself struck down by the Court of Appeal in a judgment published earlier this week. That judgment focussed on the expectations not of David?s parents, or even of the family as a whole, but on those of David as a vulnerable individual in his own right. Accordingly, the Court of Appeal was able to distinguish this case from those of famous people trying to preserve the privacy of their personal lives even where, inevitably, aspects of those personal lives are played out in public.

But I?m not convinced even that goes far enough. JK Rowling may be fantastically famous and courts publicity to promote of her writing and the causes she supports, but is otherwise a private and cautious person. Why shouldn?t she have the right to walk down the street without featuring in the following week?s celeb magazines? Does she lose this right just because she achieves a certain level of public familiarity? How do we decide that she is unable to protect herself accordingly when others can?t? Does an entrepreneur, required to promote his or her products, court publicity, thereby opening up his or her personal activities to public record, scrutiny and comment? If so, where is the line drawn - Sugar, Branson, Shepherd, Maxfield?

Attend a launch or a party or make a speech and you open yourself up to comment. Walk to the shops to buy a paper or collect the milk from your doorstep and I would say you should have the right to some degree of protection.

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