The cabinet minister, the dominatrix and a press that refused to bark
Did the press enter into a Faustian pact to ensure favourable regulation from Government? Raymond Snoddy asks why newspapers failed to bite when given a very juicy story.
For the past few days the press and the Daily Mail in particular have come close to apoplexy about being unable to reveal the identity of the “celebrity father in love-cheat threesome.”
Leave aside the issue of whether it is right or not to report the name of the world-known star and his indiscretions and whether or not the questionable behaviour of such stars should be protected in order to shield their children from ridicule.
“The Law Is An Ass” roared the Daily Mail and then there was “The Farce Goes On,” followed by “Scots know who the celebrity love cheat is, but you can’t.”
We all thought the days of the super-injunction designed to protect the public reputations of the famous were long gone thanks to the Ryan Giggs affair – on grounds of practicality.
Giggs got his injunction five years ago and his name and behaviour was immediately all over the internet and the story was published by the Sunday Herald in Scotland.
His name was howled by thousands of football supporters from the terraces and the bungled legal attempts to preserve privacy merely magnified the publicity.
The current threesome injunction covers only publications in England and Wales and as the media lawyer Mark Stephens has observed, in an interconnected world taking out a super-injunction is rather like attaching a target to your back. The story has already been published in newspapers in the US and Scotland.
Those who knew little and care less about such crude threesomes are nonetheless stirred up to find out what is going on – and their curiosity can no longer be denied.
At the same time as the threesome furore continues to run in the national press there is another sexual controversy that today forced its way into the limelight.
It involves a current Cabinet minister and his alleged relationship with a woman said to have a reputation as a dominatrix and who has been called a prostitute online.
What a gold-plated tabloid story, though actually at the same time it contains strong elements of a broadsheet nature about the workings and responsibilities of the media.
In many ways it is a much more significant story than that of celebrity threesomes.
The Independent looked at the story in detail but the then editor of the paper – when it was still a paper – Amol Rajan, decided not to publish, citing editorial reasons, while declining to say exactly what those editorial reasons were.
It is believed that apart from The Independent, newspapers as politically diverse as the Sunday People, the Mail on Sunday and The Sun have all looked into the story.
Yet in complete contrast to the trumpeting about the “love-cheat threesome” not a single squeak emerged from the mainstream press. Not a single word has been printed even though there has been no sign of an injunction or any denial and even though pictures have been posted online and the story is running all over the internet, most notably and in the greatest detail on the Byline crowd-funded journalism website.
The rumour is that in newsrooms across London word came down from on high not to run the story.
The latest most detailed Byline reporting on the issue is by experienced Independent political correspondent James Cusick who spent five months working on the newspaper cover-up behind the story before having his work shutdown too.
The Byline story had been picked up by websites such as Open Democracy, Press Gazette and Labour-Uncut and started to appear in print via Private Eye last week. Last night it finally broke on the BBC, and the rest of the (online) press ran the story.
The Byline report alleges that by his behaviour the Cabinet minister has exposed himself to potential blackmail. If true such a thing is certainly possible, but there is a much more powerful case against the Cabinet minister – because of his job he has exposed himself to a potential conflict of interest.
The newspaper industry’s case for the defence is that the MP wasn’t a minister at the time of the alleged behaviour, is no longer married, still isn’t exactly a household name and that the relationship is over.
There is a much more compelling reason for the surprising silence – the Cabinet minister involved in the controversy is John Whittingdale, the politician centrally involved in helping to shape the future of the BBC, whether or not Channel 4 should be privatised, and most crucially the future regulation of the press.
The Cusick article states that the allegations had been put to Downing Street, which replied it would be making no comment on the matter. As it related to Mr Whittingdale’s private life it was up to him to comment.
According to Cusick detailed questions were then submitted to John Whittingdale and his advisors but received no response. Only late last night, once Newsnight got a hold of the story, did Whittingdale finally admit the relationship.
So why did the newspaper groups not want to upset John Whittingdale?
At last year’s Society of Editors conference the Culture Secretary said he was minded to give the current self-regulation of the press under IPSO a chance to prove itself, despite overwhelming Parliamentary votes in favour of implementing significant recommendations for reform from Lord Justice Leveson.
Crucially for the press the Leveson proposal that newspapers would have to pay all the expenses even in libel cases that they won, was not included in legislation.
In addition the Murdoch press in particular would have been fans of the Culture Secretary because of his interest in a smaller BBC – something that Rupert Murdoch has been seeking for decades.
So somewhere along the line was there an implied Faustian pact – silence in return for favourable press regulation? We will probably never know but one thing is certain: there are very few circumstances where press freedom is best exercised by silence – where lives are at risk or in matters of national security.
The curious case of the Cabinet minister, the dominatrix and the press watchdogs which have lost their bark, is not one of them.
The next development will almost certainly come on the floor of the House of Commons now Parliament is back from the Easter recess.
It will take only one MP to raise the Whittingdale controversy in the House under the protection of Parliamentary privilege and even the embarrassingly silent press will have to run the story.