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Private Life, Public Right?
Or, A Bridge too far?
By Hugh Alderwick and Mike Deegan
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We all love free speech, apparently. But after the unsavoury revelations about John Terry’s private life, we ask: Do we, the public, have a right to know about the private lives of the famous?
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It is a pretty sorry state of affairs when the stories of John Terry’s extra-marital affairs receive more media coverage than Tony Blair’s appearance on the Iraq enquiry. Or just that we are interested enough to actually let it receive any sort of coverage at all. But the fact is that, sadly, a lot of people really care about the life of John Terry. But should we be able to hear about it? Well, it’s a resounding yes from me.
The right of all to have a private life away from the prying eyes of others is a right that should be respected; this much seems more than fair. But whilst this is true for those who are acting in a moral way, there are arguably many situations in which this right is either no longer viable, or where individuals themselves have undermined this right. Public figures and celebrities, who have themselves removed their own right to a private life, then do not deserve to suddenly attempt to regain this private sphere when they have made a major moral blunder. Moreover, if an individual holds a position of responsibility or authority, then the boundary between the spheres of private and public not only become blurred, but should both be held up for scrutiny.
Firstly, in terms of John Terry, his marriage to Toni Poole was private but turned public from the start – the newlyweds had their million pound wedding paid for by OK magazine in exchange for the rghts for their wedding to be made public through coverage in their magazine. And through buying the magazine which funded the wedding, the public essentially footed the bill. So, having invested in this marriage, the public then (quite fairly) have the right to see how their enterprise fares. An affair with an underwear model who has fathered your best friend’s child will do quite nicely thanks John. After breaking the private/public barrier yourself, you can’t just expect to be able to put it back up again without anybody noticing.
It is the public interest, beyond his huge Chelsea salary, which makes Terry money, and both image and public standing play a vital role in this. Last year, Terry was voted ‘Dad of the Year’, and it is this image which he heavily relies upon for his sponsorship deals. The public who buy the products which Terry endorses have the right to know that the portrayed image is false, so deserve to be enlightened by the media about Terry’s private sphere of dubious morals. But more importantly than this, Terry is a role model. As captain of the England team, and the captain of Chelsea, he had a responsibility both on and off the pitch to conduct himself in a way which gave a positive message to the young people who look up to football players. The judge who lifted Terry’s gagging order said that “Freedom to live as one chooses is one of the most valuable freedoms. But so is the freedom to criticise - within the limits of the law - the conduct of other members of society as being socially harmful, or wrong.” This is exactly right; the public position which Terry holds means that his behavior is indeed socially harmful, as it effects all who watch him, and by the media condemning his actions, impressionable youths and fans are shown that this type of behavior is not tolerated.
Beyond John Terry, it should be seen that it is the right of the media to make sure that any public figure who holds any sort of position of power or authority, or who is a role model in society, loses their right to privacy if their behaviour is socially harmful or wrong. If this does not happen, and individuals are able to use court action to halt media coverage of a story, then behaviour which the values of our society would condemn will go by completely unnoticed, thus reinforcing this behaviour by not letting it be shown to be socially unacceptable.
When discussing the issue of John Terry on Question Time this week, Clare Short responded to audience hostility by saying, “just think of his wife!” A fair point, but this goes back to the idea that being a role model, and by making your private life public, you have to face the consequences. It’s unfair to blame the media, they have done the only thing they could do – you just have to blame John Terry for being such an absolute twat.
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Sex scandals are nothing new. From the rife incest of the British Monarchy to the latest gossip surrounding Pete the postman getting his way with Mrs Smith at number 42. One might say sex scandals are becoming something of a tradition in the UK, one this commentator finds as palatable as hanging, slavery and imperialism. But there is more to this story than meets the eye.
The FA could have kept this one quiet. There could have been an internal dialogue in keeping with Terry’s civil rights that would have stripped him, quite rightly, of his captaincy and settled any disputes between himself and Wayne Bridge behind closed doors, where it belongs: similar to the case of rugby star Lote Tuqiri. To sully Terry’s name is a symptom of ubiquitous hypocrisy that exists in the British media: who are they to judge him? The fact that a great deal of them, and by proxy us, are guilty of the same act of infidelity, reveals a shocking double standard with regard to cheating. It is despicable on those grounds alone, that these trashy articles make it on to the front pages of our papers; if one had anything other than contempt for them in the first place. It is loathsomely déclassé too, to air people’s dirty laundry, but the average Brit laps it up with perverse enthusiasm. Indeed there are TV shows in homage to the humiliation of low-brow individuals. In Kyle we trust. The media only panders to the culture of moronism it helps to maintain, and will point the finger ruthlessly at public figures because they can take it. Because they have to, right? It’s part of being famous, right? They are paid enough to warrant our stake in their privacy, right? Wrong.
While shagging your teammate’s girlfriend is far from morally sound, do two wrongs make a right? Should a scandalous exposé on John Terry’s recent extra-marital coitus really correct his initial mistake of putting it about? Especially when most early reports were speculative, driven by hyperbole and in lieu of the full facts. Innocent until proven guilty anyone? Interesting too, that in a an elitist judicial system there was an overturned gagging order for the Dagenham ‘boy who done good’. He’s just an oik off the estates after all. Why is this wrong? Because this sort of behaviour is a throwback to the dark ages, a modern day stoning for one of the nation’s most common moral crimes. If humanity is progress, this is a clear regress: a witch-hunt where the public with its delusions of moral superiority seek to make an example of a public figure with Rupert Murdoch as judge, jury and executioner. This whole debate has largely been relegated to mere trivial pub chat between neanderthals of opposing ‘opinions’. It is as controversial as Andy Gray’s Saturday afternoon diatribes and perhaps that is the only real point to it.
Or is it? What of the greater social context? An individual’s right to privacy should be respected as such, regardless of occupation, under UK law. Since the advent of Big Brother and Labour’s Nanny State, there has been an unprecedented invasion into people’s personal lives. Coincidence? I think not.
However, the former is an example of choice determined by monetary reward by unscrupulous, pituitary-deficient, social misfits and the latter is indicative of the age of big government, one nation under CCTV and red tape and - no choice. Our sense of worth of the individual in society is constantly undermined and chipped away in the mass media. Be it Mosley’s SS sex-capades, or Ramsay’s bedroom nightmares, the public remains fixated on gossip, rumours and the invasions of privacy of the public figure. Ultimately this mindset creates a dangerous precedent, serving to subconsciously support the further removal of our civil liberties and rights to individual privacy in the guise of supposed terrorism, or whatever the latest imagined focal point of fear is. It is the principle of the individual’s right to privacy that so sorely needs protection. While Terry is the most recent social pariah, the bigger picture here is the dire need for protection of personal privacy.
It’s his life, not ours. It’s clearly not affected his ability to captain Chelsea, given that he claimed an assist against Arsenal at the weekend. Hypothetically speaking, if Terry were to score the winning goal from a set piece in the World Cup Final in Cape Town, the scandal would be soon forgotten and replaced with lavish praise and the status of national hero. How fickle we are.
This article was written by Hugh Alderwick and Mike Deegan and was uploaded at 6:45am, Friday 12th February 2010.
It was posted in LS1 » The Big Debate » Private Life, Public Right?