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A BBC television journalist has disclosed that he won a court order in 2008 to prevent British newspapers from reporting details of an extra-marital affair, fuelling a debate on individual privacy versus press freedom.
Andrew Marr, who regularly interviews senior politicians on an agenda-setting Sunday morning TV show, said he felt uncomfortable about obtaining a "super injunction" which critics say the rich and the famous are using to silence the press.
"I did not come into journalism to go around gagging journalists," the former BBC political editor told the Daily Mail newspaper in comments published on Tuesday.
"Am I embarrassed by it? Am I uneasy about it? Yes. But at the time there was a crisis in my marriage," added Marr, who is also a former editor of the Independent newspaper.
Marr went public rather than fight a fresh attempt by satirical magazine Private Eye to get the 2008 ruling lifted. The "super injunction" is so named because not only are newspapers not allowed to publish the news, they are further blocked from saying who won the order.
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Prime Minister David Cameron said last week that he was uneasy about the way that judges were creating a form of privacy law by the backdoor through a series of such orders, rather than allowing parliament to legislate.
KISS AND SELL
Britain has a highly competitive tabloid press which uses tales of infidelity by sportsmen and celebrities to help sell newspapers in a declining market.
Tabloid tactics are in the spotlight after the News of the World, part of Rupert Murdoch's News Corp, apologised to eight people including actress Sienna Miller for intercepting their voicemail messages in search of stories.
Newspapers argue that the use of gagging orders risks harming genuine investigative journalism.
"These super-injunctions don't just involve the tabloids," David Leigh, investigations executive editor at the Guardian newspaper, told the BBC.
"They have spread like a disease or a virus and they cause serious problems for serious papers."
Advocates of press freedom cite the case of former Royal Bank of Scotland boss Fred Goodwin, who became a public hate figure after leaving the bailed-out bank with a lucrative pension.
Goodwin won a super injunction imposing a news blackout on reporting about him, including the detail that he was a banker. It was disclosed when Liberal Democrat lawmaker John Hemming used parliamentary privilege to talk about the order in March.
However, Rod Dadak, a leading media lawyer at Lewis Silkin, told Reuters that newspapers were overreacting.
"I think their reaction to this is a little hysterical," he told Reuters.
Tales about the sexual exploits of soccer players were not of genuine public interest but a chance for individuals selling the story and the newspapers to cash in on celebrity, he said.
"It's not about morality, it's about money."
