Celebs shouldn’t get anonymity if their secrets are already online, top judge claims
Lord Jonathan Mance said there was is no point granting gagging orders in cases which are already widely known
INTERNET gossip makes many celebrity gagging orders pointless reckons a senior judge.
Lord Jonathan Mance said their identities were often already widely known thanks to Facebook and Twitter.
In an interview he said: “Obviously if everybody knows the name, then there is no point in the law trying to shut the door after the horse has bolted.”
In 2016 Lord Mance, 75, upheld a gagging order against the press in the only celebrity privacy case to reach the Supreme Court.
He refused to allow a married star who had an extra-marital threesome to be identified as the celeb involved had not been widely named.
Speaking as he steps down as deputy president of the court, Lord Mance insisted judges must not be affected by social media.
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He said: “We are trained not to be influenced.
“If people started to believe as a result of trolling or media that judges were doing just what they liked and giving effect to their personal preferences, rather than applying the hallowed system of common law and statute law honestly and diligently, they would be very mistaken.”
The Press has been gagged numerous times despite those involved being named online.
In 2011 a world-famous married Brit actor took out an injunction after he paid for sex with Wayne Rooney hooker Helen Wood.
The Sun Says
Blockheads
WHEN celebrities’ bad behaviour is splashed all over social media, it makes no sense that newspapers are sometimes held to different standards.
One of Britain’s most senior judges agrees, saying that legal blocks that stop us reporting on some public figures are wrong when the briefest of internet searches reveals the truth.
A free Press shouldn’t be muzzled by outdated laws.
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