Opinion

Unmuzzled for now

LONDON The captain of England’s soccer team is supposed to be not only very good at the game, but a paragon of moral virtue, too — a sort of amalgam of Joe DiMaggio and St. Francis of Assisi. There were always doubts that the Chelsea centerback John Terry was either; now we know for sure.

Terry, who is married, slept with a teammate’s girlfriend — sultry, fat-faced French lingerie model Vanessa Perroncel. But when the press caught wind of this, Terry’s solicitors delivered a “super-injunction” — preventing any British newspaper from printing anything about the story, even to the extent of hinting that there was a story in the first place which had been the subject of legal action.

They were able to do this under the United Kingdom’s 1998 Human Rights Act, which prevents journalists from delving too deeply into stories that might, uh, compromise an individual’s privacy. It has been used time and again to prevent revelations about people who are in the public eye — including those regarding a top TV political commentator who was married and his highly productive affair with another political journalist.

Reporters feel the noose tightening around them: on the one side, a human-rights act devolved from the European Union that values personal privacy more highly than press freedom; on the other, a lone judge, Justice David Eady, who presides over libel cases and comes down in favor of the plaintiffs more often than the newspapers might like.

So instead of being a simple case of sportsman has sex when he shouldn’t, the Terry business became a cause célébre for the press: Can we report nothing?

These days, in Britain, every written word is scrutinized, and not just for possible infractions of privacy law. Was it racist? Did it amount to some sort of European Union-designated hate crime? Did it deny something it is illegal to deny, or promote something it is illegal to promote?

What you can write now is a constrained and timid thing. There are so many people you might upset as a consequence, and they have the recourse of the courts.

The super-injunction used in this case enrages the press, which thinks it an unfair and undemocratic imposition. So the journalists are exultant that this time it has been overturned — which in part explains why it was the splash front-page lead in every morning newspaper over the weekend.

The story of an England captain sleeping with a teammate’s girlfriend is a good story for Britain’s tabloids, but the story led all of the broadsheet press, too. The truth is, they were in celebratory mode: It was the defeat of the super-injunction that made the story so compelling.

With John Terry, the appellate courts said enough is enough. The super-injunction was overturned by High Court Justice Michael Tugendhat, who clearly believed that Terry’s main concern was not to protect the privacy of his (many) loved ones, but to protect his other extremely lucrative contracts: He earns $200,000 a week for the act of kicking people (and sometimes kicking soccer balls), but he earns much more from sponsorships.

Meanwhile, so far as the press is concerned, England’s soccer team needs to find a new captain as it prepares for its World Cup campaign in South Africa. Should it be Steve Gerrard, who was arraigned for having punched a disc jockey in the face last year while having a few drinks in a bar, or maybe Ashley Cole, who vomited on a girl he picked up in a bar while he was married?

Or maybe Rio Ferdinand, who went on the lam when he was faced with a compulsory drug test and was banned from the game for eight months? Or better still, England’s star forward Wayne Rooney, who has in the past revealed his liking for very old call girls? Some of these people are good at soccer; none are St. Francis of Assisi.

Whoever it is had better understand that the old fallback of the super-injunction can no longer be relied upon. Watch yourselves, boys; others are watching you very closely.

Rod Liddle is associate editor of The Spectator (UK).