Celebrity Privacy Blog

In Privacy and Libel Law: The Clash with Press Freedom, Paul Tweed asks the reader to decide whether there is indeed any hope for a return to the principle of quality in journalism that embodies fair and accurate reporting without offense to the rights and dignity of its citizenry. Historians will look back on this time period, with gratitude for the diligence and clarity with which Tweed lays out every argument with cogent examples and references on every side of this raucous debate and conclude with sadness, that democracy in its heyday was a worthy experiment, but hopelessly doomed for its failure to account for human nature in the amassing of corporate and institutional power and unrelenting greed.

His standard is rationality.  If the question is why; here’s why….  The Wesleyan Media Project released a report on Monday, which demonstrates that the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United, has resulted in a 1627% rise in Superpac media attack ads since the 2008 election. Spending by these groups and their billionaire funders has risen by 1282% and we are not half-way through the Republican primaries.

 Lyons is using the wrong standard.  It is not about the value of one Tech Company against another.  Facebook v. Google in the social networking sphere in relation to revenue is not the true measure of Facebook’s value.  Like Google, it might possibly be worth twice as much to certain members of the 1%. Facebook may only be seven years old, but even if you agreed that it has “a great story and an amazing brand,” that’s not an indication of its true value.  Lyons admits: “Who hasn’t heard of Facebook? Who doesn’t use it?” Half a billion people use Facebook every day.  Those in the know have noted the introduction of TIMELINE.  The feature promises to reveal, “All your stories, all your apps, and a new way to express who you are; it boils down to a single scrolling page that contains much of your Facebook existence, chronicling everything that you have done.” Select any year and Timeline will show you what happened in your life in that year.” Next, there is the new OpenGraph feature, which continuously updates your profile, as it discovers new things from your friends. The music application alone is designed to constantly keep the world informed as to what a person is listening to.  Lifestyle apps will track what you eat, where you jog, play, work, PERMANENTLY. The Facebook F8 Developer conference unveiled the company’s plan: to execute agreements with a number of companies to bring the content that Facebook users are watching or listening to around the web into their Facebook profile in real-time.

If multi-billionaires are on the verge of securing that highly coveted a 9% tax plan that brought the likes of Herman Cain into the national spotlight, what’s a mere 100 billion between them to secure the kind of power that having that much information on the whole of the electorate can ultimately buy.

News outlets report that defense of Mitt Romney as a corporate raider is in full sway. That might be the understatement of the year.  The larger issue, beyond one politician’s record, is the elephant in the room: specific details (state by state) of the fallout from the worst of the excesses.  That debate has been effectively sidelined for certain segments of the population by a grand ole non-sequitur.  Fox News personality (serious political commentator) Bill O’Reilly, while manning the no-spin zone, recently took pains to run a segment featuring Kim Kardashian.  Who? What?

And other outlets have piled on: “When you buy something from a charity auction, you usually assume that 100%, or at least a large portion, of the proceeds are going to charity. Stop doing this! According to Fox News, a handful of celebrities including Kim and Khloe only donate a paltry 10%.” 

So the public’s attention is shifted away from the joblessness, homelessness and panic that has resulted from corporate raiding by the wealthy elite or the court case that has enabled unnamed billionaires to skew what may be the nation’s most important presidential election since Lincoln.  No, the public is being asked to condemn the 10%-ers.

This is hardly the Fourth Estate that Edmund Burke, an 18th-century British politician, is credited with crowning as a watchdog over government and industry.  To the extent that the clause guaranteeing freedom of the press was designed to create a mechanism outside of governmental control as an additional check on the three  branches of government, we have some tweaking to do.

 Casey Anthony is the current poster girl of Bad Mother Fame: portrayed as a narcissistic and heartless bitch who may very well have orchestrated the murder of her toddler daughter.  In contrast, men convicted of murdering their children evoke pity and their crimes go quietly under-reported.  According to Professor Jack Levin, there are 10 murder-suicides a week in the United States.” The profile of a family annihilator is a middle-aged man, a good provider who would appear to neighbors to be a dedicated husband and a devoted father.”  In truth, the most significant factors driving these men are family break-up, male sexual jealousy, a need to be in control and extreme possessiveness.  Chris Milroy, a forensic pathologist at the Forensic Science Service who studies murder-suicides, says that “When men kill their children there tends to be revenge in the equation. It’s like they’re saying, ‘If I can’t have them, no one can.’”  Much less than a spontaneous act of passion driven by despair, these killings resemble meticulously planned executions.

 Women accused in the disappearance of their kids no matter the reason, become an instant obsession of public media and targets of the blogosphere.  While media coverage is often sparse when men kill their kids, there is a noticeable proclivity in those cases to focus extensively on how the wife or mother’s behavior was a trigger for the crime.

 Ms. Anthony’s daughter went missing in mid- 2008 and the child’s dead body discovered later that year.  By all accounts the evidence against her was circumstantial.  It was the media frenzy surrounding this case which fortified those inferences by holding Anthony’s social behavior, both before and after her child was missing, under a high powered microscope.  The public sentiment is that Ms. Anthony has not behaved as a mother would or should was enough to convict in the minds of most bloggers.  According to one: “She partied and stayed at her new boyfriend house almost every night” a month after the child disappeared.  Anthony’s entire family was defamed in the process, implicating the grandmother as the controlling matriarch who raised the heartless child-murderer.  

 Nearing the end of her current probation, after being acquitted of murder but convicted of obstruction of justice, Anthony suffered a privacy breach of the same magnitude as the phone hacking scandal in the UK that led to the arrest of several high profile News of the World editors.  The 4 minute video released this week was produced for private use.  Yet, major media outlets continue to focus upon her appearance, whether the video provides clues as to her whereabouts, her failure to mention the toddler’s name, her obsessive focus upon herself, and speculation that she is gearing up to profit from the celebrity persona that they created.

 Major news outlets hastily confirmed that it was Anthony on camera.  The real question is how much time, energy and resources will these same outlets spend investigating the status of the presumably ongoing criminal investigation into the toddlers disappearance or informing the public as to whether Anthony’s acquittal means that police are obligated to continue the search.  How about a documentary or extended report on the role of politics in this made for TV criminal case?  A prosecutor in the Casey Anthony trial recently announced he will run for the state attorney’s office in Florida.

Richard Donovan is the founder of the most successful Marathon that the North Pole has ever hosted. At a cost of 12,000 euros per person, the brave have answered this call.

By competing in the world’s coolest marathon, the North Pole Marathon, you will become one of a truly select few to race at the top of the world – at the Geographic North Pole. And you will feel on top of the world when you manage to overcome the extreme sub-zero temperatures to finish 26.2 miles in one of the remotest parts of the planet.  

But first you must ask yourself if you have got the nerve and drive to travel to the North Pole and run on Arctic ice floes, with 6 to 12 feet separating you from 12,000 feet of Arctic Ocean? Can you handle the extreme cold? Are you fit enough? Do you want to push yourself to the edge? If the answer is yes, then you are ready for the North Pole Marathon. Join race director Richard Donovan, the first marathoner at both the North and South Poles, in a trip of a lifetime. Remember, this marathon is not run on land – it is run ‘on’ water, frozen water, in the high Arctic Ocean. You will never have a greater adventure marathon story. http://www.npmarathon.com/

 Business was great until Donovan allowed a writer for Forbes Magazine to tag along for the 2006 race.  The trip and the race were a success.  The sensationalized, fabrications published by the magazine and distributed to 5 million readers a short time later was nothing short of a travesty that caused a 50% decline in business.  Forbes may have been banking on the lack of enforcement of libel laws in the US to protect them, in much the same fashion of sleazy tabloids.  However, Donovan experienced a high-level victory because he hired famed media libel lawyer Paul Tweed.  Tweed’s legendary BBC documentaries See You in Court, features Episode 3: 12 April 201, that covers his work on behalf of Richard Donovan.  Way to Go Paul!  Congratulations Mr. Donovan.

The Joint Committee on the Draft Defamation Bill today publishes its report on defamation law and welcomes many of the reforms proposed in the draft Bill.

Chairman, Rt Hon. Lord Mawhinney said:

“Defamation proceedings are far too expensive, which is a barrier to all but the richest. Our recommendations should help minimise the reliance on expensive lawyers and the courts, bringing defamation action into the reach of ordinary people who find themselves needing to protect their reputation or defend their right to freedom of speech. They are based upon firm principles, which I am sure the Government will support.”    

The unanimously-agreed report proposes many detailed amendments to the defences available against libel claims, mainly designed to strike a fairer balance between the protection of reputation and freedom of speech. For example, greater protection is proposed for scientists and academics writing in peer-reviewed articles and for publishers in reporting on their debates at conferences.

Key problems

The report argues that the Government’s proposals do not do enough to address the key problems in defamation law – the “unacceptably” high costs which make access to justice difficult for many.  The committee proposes a series of reforms aimed at ensuring that disputes are generally resolved rapidly by mediation or arbitration, rather than via the courts.

For entire article see: http://www.parliament.uk/business/committees/committees-a-z/joint-select/draft-defamation-bill1/news/publication-report/

They say that the measure of a society is how it treats its weakest members. Our society’s increasingly obsessive voyeurism –the lives it claims and the example it sets—makes me wonder how we as a society would fare if we were measured by how we treat people like Kim Kardashian, Lindsay Lohan, or Britney Spears. Of course, to most, this proposition would sound ridiculous at first glance. After all, these women are “rich and famous,” something which has, in itself, curiously become a profession. (A recent Pew survey revealed that the majority of 18-25 year-olds believes that being rich and famous are the most important life goals of people in their age group. ) These women have in some ways benefited from the market for disclosure of their private facts and images: reality shows, constant Twitter updates, endorsements. Their “service” is in exposing themselves – and for this, they sometimes get paid.
Unfortunately, the profitability of self-exposure is short-lived and often comes at a high price. The disclosure market negatively affects many: those who profit from it, those public figures who don’t profit, and society in general. For those who are (seemingly) willingly profiting, the disclosure market is merciless. It is fueled by train wrecks, in other words, when the exposed lives fall apart. Britney Spears surely did not benefit (financially or otherwise) from the images of her shaving her head in a dazed state; nor did Lindsay Lohan for her multiple mug shots. And yet by putting themselves out there to begin with, our culture seems to accept that these women deserved the ensuing attention. One could legitimately ask whether this constant gaze was the cause — or perhaps just the effect — of their life troubles. For those public figures who don’t seek to publicize every instant of their lives, the disclosure market is equally troubling. These individuals find themselves more heavily scrutinized and invaded by a culture that has become desensitized to traditional values of privacy and intimacy.
The effects of the disclosure market and culture are not limited to those whose disclosures make the tabloid news. All of us are affected when one of us is treated in a way that denigrates them as women and as human beings – whether or not they are “rich and famous.” When such invasions are carried out publicly and systematically, we risk teaching our children that their own private facts are merely chips to be bartered in exchange for money and notoriety. The sad thing is that when there are no private facts left to sell, what is often left is a shred of a human being with many troubles, little dignity, and a battered reputation. And some call that entertainment.

Noting that the recent jobs bill rejected by the conservative US Senate would have brought 22,000 new jobs to Massachusetts, Warren reminded the heckler who thinks that women are intimidated by the label slut and whore that she has been on the front lines of protesting Wall Street excesses “for a very long time.”

Her response to the disruption was to remind those who witnessed the outburst that there was plenty of work to be done and now is the time to address the nation’s longstanding policy of socialism for the 1%.  The point, as Thomas Ferguson summarized in Boston, “is to force government to take account of the interests of the 99% of Americans who have been left holding the bag for bank bailouts, bonuses, and corporate welfare as they scramble to find jobs and dig themselves out of debt.”  He assured Occupy Wall Street Protestors: “Only weeks after you surged in the streets, your numbers are much better than the Tea Party’s. I would guess that in part that is because many Americans have favorably noted your culture of non-violence, tolerance, and respect for individual persons. The contrast with the cults of violence growing up elsewhere in the system is obvious and infinitely refreshing.”

Ferguson goes on to highlight the two less visible problems with money and politics in the United States today:

 1. Top level policy is controlled by Congressional Committees: “You want a committee slot or an important leadership post, you buy it.”

2.  Disparities between regulators’ salaries and what you can make in the private sector has transformed our regulatory institutions into employment agencies for the industries they are supposed to regulate.

 Now we move onto solutions:

 I agree with Ferguson that we need a constitutional amendment that forces government to regulate money in elections. With the many proposed amendments to bolster the Tea Party’s social agenda, we’d have to make room for meaningful legislation, which is really about wiping the slate clean with Elizabeth Warren and her cohorts at the head of the table.

 Ultimately, money in politics is about the handful of large corporations that control nearly all broadcast media. The most important regulator will have to become the FCC.  Reigning in political advertisements, op-ed news shows, lies and distortions on cable television “news” programming, and regulating all forms of media consistent with the public good, is where the real “occupy” movement is needed.

Headline: Lawyer pleads for judge to send Lindsay to Jail.  Rikki Klieman wants everyone:  “rich or poor, black, brown or white, including addicts, to be fearful of going to court and facing a judge.” She sees it as a sign of respect, civility, and shame. To deter those who would transgress the laws, she recommends “facing the might and power of the system.”  As if to make her point, she concludes that: “ People who are not celebrities have to obey the rules. That is how society functions.”   The real tragedy, that Klieman misses, is that were it not for the wholesale violation of Lohan’s constitutional rights to privacy, like every other late teen and early-adult girl having fun, she would have been left to deal with her issues in private and most likely with a great deal more success.  

If a lawyer wants to mount a soap box about shame and respect, examine the antics of the paparazzi and the publishers for whom they stalk about and assess the extent of the fear and shame they feel when facing the “might and power” of the system, represented by lawyers hiding behind the First Amendment.  Better yet, take a moment to clarify why, in the land of the free and home of the brave, with the First Amendment serving as a foundation for the world’s oldest living democracy, the press is even allowed to continue abusing its freedom, while celebrity radio personality Lisa Simeone was fired for her recent political protest.  In a phone call on Wednesday, managers at NPR claimed she violated their code that forbids journalists from participating in marches/rallies or signing petitions, lending their name or contributing money to causes or issues that NPR covers.  Simeone understands the spirit of the law better than some members of the bar:

 I find it puzzling that NPR objects to my exercising my rights as an American citizen — the right to free speech, the right to peaceable assembly — on my own time in my own life. I’m not an NPR employee. I’m a freelancer. NPR doesn’t pay me. I’m also not a news reporter. I don’t cover politics. I’ve never brought a whiff of my political activities into the work I’ve done for NPR World of Opera. What is NPR afraid I’ll do — insert a seditious comment into a synopsis of Madame Butterfly?

With the debt ceiling crisis left unresolved and millions of protestors taking to the streets to Occupy McPherson Square and its equivalent all over this great nation, you would imagine that the tabloid stalking of celebrities might cease while a spotlight is shined on Wall Street Barons. Oh well, dare to dream.  The Washington Post believes that entertainment is not merely commentary and cutting edge coverage of fashion, lifestyle and entertainment venues, but invasion of celebrity privacy.  The hubris that it takes to report that Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore need to escape rumors that their marriage is under stress by releasing an “official” statement about it, goes to the heart of why democracy is in peril today.

Global media empires run by those who provide “convenient” lists of the private moments of A list celebrities along with photos to “share with your co-workers,” instead of listing the 5 largest factors contributing to US debt, is a sad commentary on the state of the laws governing a free press that delights in abusing its freedom.  Matter of fact descriptions of the stalkerazzi crashing a weekend camping trip and (by implication) fabricated and defamatory headlines about its purpose with photos or footage of the couple seeking to banish the intruders is what the  Post views as entertaining.  Blow by blow reports of tweets, passages that read like solicitation of the contents of any (presumably private) direct messaging, can only end in a resounding for-your-own-good flourish: the reporters state that if  the reports are classic defamation, then their primary option is to break their silence.  Of, course they would advise a method that turns their private lives into a public debate.  Their public statement should be: it’s none of your damn business.  A law suit for damages for the public disclosure of private facts is more to the point. Alas, the Post might then find it worthwhile to make its last “required” post of Demi/Ashton news a bullet-point synopsis of how the court battle has progressed and what privacy and false light defamation actually mean under the laws of the United States of America.