Do super injunctions generate public interest?

It has been an interesting week in the world of privacy. In the past two days there have been approximately 30,000 tweets relating to super injunctions and the footballer allegedly caught up in the middle of this media cyclone. In real time, this represents one tweet being posted every 8 seconds.

Yet, his name cannot be mentioned because it is not considered public interest. But what constitutes public interest? Celebrity PR man Max Clifford said last week on Radio 4’s media show that only 20% of the stories he has placed in his 30-year career would qualify for publication on the grounds of public interest. It seems there is a fine line between publication and injunction.

Let’s look at this another way, had the Sun named the footballer on the morning of April 14, before the initial injunction was taken out, would this saga have happened?  The story would have made a splash and been forgotten about within a week, the same with John Terry who undoubtedly would have remained as England captain if he hadn’t pursued a super injunction.

John Terry’s use of a super injunction only heightened the media and public interest in the story and led to public outrage which would not have existed if the story had been printed one Sunday in News of the World. Instead the story appeared on the front page of all UK newspapers which would have previously been unthinkable.  Super injunctions have in effect taken the ‘kiss and tell’ from the red tops to the mainstream which is the opposite of what was intended through their use.

Instead, with this latest case we have seen a high court battle and page after page of journalism about “super injunctions” followed by endless social media speculation, announcements from the Prime Minister, and more importantly almost the entire population knowing the name of the footballer.

Given the volume of discussion in the media on this topic and considering the Sunday Herald published the name and photo of the alleged footballer, I believe Justice Tugendhat will have a hard time saying this story is still ‘not in the public interest’.