However I do have a sincere question. Why doesn't anybody post that only 8 sections of the book were banned and not the entire 38? I have read many of the objections were trivial.
Posts: 1 | Location: ct | Registered: January 30, 2008
I have read, with interest, the comments made by the subscribers to Mr. Greenslade's blog, the articles printed in the Globe and Mail, and Miss McKennitt's responses. I congratulate Miss McKennitt on "sticking to her guns" and pursuing the issue. While, embarrassingly, I have only known of Miss McKennitt for about three years, I have read about how much good she has done for her community...how involved she is on so many different levels. Such as it is, it is my feeling that one's personal life should be sacrosanct. No one has the right to intrude, through writing, publicly speaking, recording, or photographing, on or about anyone else's personal matters when they do not directly affect those who have no direct personal involvement. Public figures/ "celebrities" should be held accountable for their roles as public figures/"celebrities"...not their personal lives. Report/write about their performances in public...not intimate details of a personal nature. I strongly support Miss McKennitt's stand on this issue. I applaud her willingness to take the media to task. They well and truly need to be put in their place. Where is respect... where is honour? Hopefully, some in the media will re-examine their roles. Miss McKennitt has held her head high and stuck to her principles. I admire that.
Bill O'Reilly (Fox News--U.S. network)is doing an interesting series on celebrity privacy rights. I never knew that Jacqueline Kennedy had sued over her privacy and won. Very illuminating discussion. Certainly the abuse that many stars suffer by the paparazzi should be curbed extremely.
Posts: 39 | Location: Heart of the Central Texas Universe | Registered: January 11, 2007
Originally posted by drdiver: I find it an interesting phenomenon that celebrities create contractual agreements between their employees/friends/hangers-on whatever you wish to call them with the idea of controlling what is said about them at a later date. Of course, such a practice has been a standard practice in corporations for many years at a certain level of employment. The image of the celebrity is integral part of the celebrity package (in some case the only part). So to the extent that celebrities view these relationships as employees certainly a contract with them is binding. It must lead to a very difficult life however, where one's friends have to be viewed as employees to help maintain an image. It is must undoubtedly be at least part of the cause of many of the emotional and physical illnesses and disturbances that occur with so many celebrities.
The other issue is that such agreements are used to suppress the reporting of illegal activities (which was not the case in the McKennitt-Ash dispute--I've read the Ash book and personally thought the whole thing a tempest in a teapot, but it wasn't my privacy invaded and clearly LM felt strongly about it and under UK law she clearly had a right to sue and won.) In the U.S. I doubt that the case would have made it to court.
The coverup of illegal activities is the dark side of "maintaining privacy". It is easy to intimidate an individual with the threat of a lawsuit--hence the whistleblower laws in government to protect people who come forward about illegal activities. And those laws do not work well.
Consider this: One of the key witnesses in bringing the indictment of Michael Vick for illegal gambling involving dog fighting was doing business with him (he had sold him one of the dogs that was later murdered). He could have been held accountable under a contractual secrecy agreement as a contractor to the celebrity. Everyone should think about the power of the rich and the powerful (and I'm certainly not limiting this to celebrities) to suppress information through intimidation. One of the precepts of the Code of Hammurabi (one of the oldest law codes) was "The first duty of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful."
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When one is involved in illegal or criminal behavior, the right to privacy goes out the window and is superceded by the right of the public to know and protect themselves. If one isn't a danger to society they should have the right to their privacy, whether they be rich and powerful or poor and powerless.
Mona
Posts: 137 | Location: Minnesota | Registered: August 12, 2007
I find it an interesting phenomenon that celebrities create contractual agreements between their employees/friends/hangers-on whatever you wish to call them with the idea of controlling what is said about them at a later date. Of course, such a practice has been a standard practice in corporations for many years at a certain level of employment. The image of the celebrity is integral part of the celebrity package (in some case the only part). So to the extent that celebrities view these relationships as employees certainly a contract with them is binding. It must lead to a very difficult life however, where one's friends have to be viewed as employees to help maintain an image. It is must undoubtedly be at least part of the cause of many of the emotional and physical illnesses and disturbances that occur with so many celebrities.
The other issue is that such agreements are used to suppress the reporting of illegal activities (which was not the case in the McKennitt-Ash dispute--I've read the Ash book and personally thought the whole thing a tempest in a teapot, but it wasn't my privacy invaded and clearly LM felt strongly about it and under UK law she clearly had a right to sue and won.) In the U.S. I doubt that the case would have made it to court.
The coverup of illegal activities is the dark side of "maintaining privacy". It is easy to intimidate an individual with the threat of a lawsuit--hence the whistleblower laws in government to protect people who come forward about illegal activities. And those laws do not work well.
Consider this: One of the key witnesses in bringing the indictment of Michael Vick for illegal gambling involving dog fighting was doing business with him (he had sold him one of the dogs that was later murdered). He could have been held accountable under a contractual secrecy agreement as a contractor to the celebrity. Everyone should think about the power of the rich and the powerful (and I'm certainly not limiting this to celebrities) to suppress information through intimidation. One of the precepts of the Code of Hammurabi (one of the oldest law codes) was "The first duty of government is to protect the powerless from the powerful."
This message has been edited. Last edited by: drdiver,
Posts: 39 | Location: Heart of the Central Texas Universe | Registered: January 11, 2007
The position that has now been reached in English law is that anything that pertains to your private life, and that includes what you do in the street, such as going shopping, is private...
When are people going to realize there is no such thing as privacy anymore. On Greenslade's argument as stated above, even walking down the street, especially in London, one of the most surveyed cities ever means that privacy is extinct. Just because we are Joe Civilian does not mean we are immune from being watched constantly, our credit cards tracked, surveillance of our houses on Google Earth and pictures taken without our consent. The list goes on. And these are things we just take for granted. I can't tell you how many cameras I've seen go up in my area alone to survey actions presumably for red-light offenders.
Besides the groups online that exist to destroy such surveillance cameras I've listed above, what can anyone do these days that protects them from such unwanted intrusive actions taken on by our governments that simultaneously are there to "protect" us and "reveal" us? Such a double edged sword.
I've noticed that the title of this particular forum has changed to encompass a few different aspects that LM was trying to touch on in her various post-trial communications. Perhaps it would be best to have different sub-group forums to talk about each section, because I could go on all day about what I just wrote above, but that doesn't fit exactly into the celebrity privacy debate that the forum is currently titled.
There's something which has been turning in my brain for more than 10 days...
Almost two weeks ago I re-red the answer of Greenslade and some sentences left me perplex ... What surprises me, "shocks" me and makes me wonder about our world, it's the way some people are able to think or to see the life.
For example, Greenslade wrote :
quote:
The position that has now been reached in English law is that anything that pertains to your private life, and that includes what you do in the street, such as going shopping, is private
But what we (famous or not) buy or where we can go IS private !
I'm talking about him, but not only. I met many people -most of them are men- who have a total incapacity to think "normally" or to see well things as they are . I know it sounds subjective but its not: some values are universals and some are "universals" only for us as occidentals in our consumer society and could not be well seen in, I don't know, one of the last primitive tribe in the world.
And about values, I saw many reports and debates talking about the problem of the young generation "suffering" of a lack of these so precious values. I remember well how specialists told that some teenagers have no notion of privacy at all due to an education by uncontrolled media, seeing everything about everyone's life and absolutely think that there's nothing wrong to film with their mobil phone friends of them slamming others schoolers -or teachers!- and put the film or the photos on the web (and I'm not talking about the fact that they don't even have the idea to help the attacked one, as if watching the scene in the small screen of their mobil made they were not real witnesses anymore!)
But reading Greenslade's answer, I realized that not only teenagers have this problem of values. Apparently, as too many people, he takes as normal something which is not and I see much more the importance of the judgement of Loreena's process.
Really, thank you because it's more than time to give back to important and essential values the place they should have and I think this victory participated to it.
In the same idea he said:
quote:
Finally, and crucially, I believe that people should be as free as possible to express themselves, even if it impinges on another person's privacy on occasion".
!!! ? And I don't know if this one is not the worst! I don't even understand how he manage to write this...?...
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Greenslade also wrote, quoting (if I followed well) Clare Dyer who quoted Hugh Tomlinson QC (!...) :
quote:
This judgment is a turning point in the development of English privacy law. It means the courts will not allow publication of 'kiss and tell' stories after the breakdown of a friendship or relationship. "At the same time, the court of appeal rejected the argument that a person who tells their own story to the press gives up their future privacy rights. The effect on the tabloids could be dramatic.
!!! does he expect us to be sad?! Because he really seems to be affected by this. And here, it's very twisted: not only lots of them (=him and people like him) are not able to to define what should be their values but also where they should be. They hang up to these tabloids and "kiss and tell" stories as if humanity would be lost without these things and we would be close to the end of the world (didn't I already say that I'm happy that it's more the end of THEIR world?...)
Always quoting Dyer, he wrote in the same way:
quote:
She added that unauthorised biographies could be particularly affected.
Well, if they are unauthorised it's a little bit normal that they are affected one day! No? It's amazing that some people (and unfortunately not few) can think it's natural to let raptors do what they want: these "writers"/"journalists" who authorize themselves to write the life of someone else without his consent. How can they be so interested in others ' life (and I'm talking here of course about writing only answering to this insane greed about details of famous people's life and not a real historical portrait of a politician or a past writer, for example)?
I know that there was always this thing in our society: fairy tales (as Cinderella) was already a way for "basic" people to live through their leaders' life (king, prince, etc.) but we went too far . Today, paparazzi would have probably tried to have a photo of Cinderella half necked or one of what she bought last week-end to the supermarket. I understand that it helped "poor people" to hear fairy tales and showed them a good way to behave by following the story's moral but what I just like to add about this thirst of famous people's life, it's this little sentence from old asiatic wisdom: (it's not exactly this but it's the meaning)
"The time spent to live the dream of someone else it's a time you won't spend on your own dream"
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Posts: 201 | Location: Paris or in the forest, but always close to a tree | Registered: March 01, 2007
Hi I don´t know in depth the case and the people involved in it. But what little I know (I have read the article by Mr. Roy Greenslade), I can only say 3 things:
1, the freedom of expression is being used in many places (including Spain) for insulting and even destroy people, walking(this freedom of expression) on the border of the law. And this is a big business for many "journalists".
2, After a discussion/confrontation, sure many people would do a catharsis exercise, but if this exercise is about a "memories book"of the other person, Does it have validity?(this memory book).
3, Mr Roy Greenslade said "...legal action to ban 38 separate sections be deleted, some of them as small as five lines" I think that, in only 5 lines can be done much harm/damage, Mr Greenslade.
Finally only express my sympathy to Loreena and your team And as always feel my limitations in the use of the English language, on this occasion even more than others.
Posts: 12 | Location: Málaga/Spain | Registered: March 02, 2007
I don't understand some people sometimes... I myself would not like having people writing books about me without my knowledge/liking... "Blow of freedom"...that's so silly.
I just read the texts on the Greenslade BLOG side. I just have to ask you: did Loreena herself write the comments? Well spoken.
hugs from Malin, Sweden
Posts: 158 | Location: Föllinge, Sweden | Registered: August 19, 2007
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Prejudice, distortion and the cult of celebrity: Is the press going to hell in a handcart? The inaugural lecture of Roy Greenslade at City University, London on 22 January 2004. Roy is Professor of Journalism at City University, media commentator for The Guardian and a MediaWise trustee.
A little out of the subject but ... as we were arguing last week on the blog of the courageous Greenslade, 2 greats french journalists died. I only learnt it yesterday and I didn't have the time to come here to write it. I do it tonight because I think they deserve a thought, them and all the one we don't know all over the wordl but who are to the service to the information.
And the second was a journalist who wrote books about the decline of the press. He was a real professional aware of what was becoming journalism in France (and abroad) and fought with very hard and "pickling" (?) words against this decline. *Bernard Morrot*
...
quote:
Originally posted by Shan-Lyn:
These are very wise words... Thank you for sharing them.
Thank you. In "some" years, you have time to learn few things...
The VERY OLD Elf...
Posts: 201 | Location: Paris or in the forest, but always close to a tree | Registered: March 01, 2007
(about forgivness) But, to my eyes, not very welcome one week after the end of a process and some days after big discussions about it, where the victim is still assaulted or attacked...
Sorry it's just my point of view, of course, not a sentence "in the idea to answer instead of Loreena." It's her case and I was just thinking that if I was her, I would have probably thought that was too early to talk to me about forgiveness.
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Posts: 201 | Location: Paris or in the forest, but always close to a tree | Registered: March 01, 2007
