All a twitter over #superinjunction tweets. Advice to celebs “STFU”

So, the gloss is wearing off social media; the excitement is waning and the holy-roller experts are starting to sound like hollowed-out snakeoil sellers after a beating in the Dry Gulch town square.

We have been taken for a ride once too often. The world of celebrity tweets as a viral marketing tool may (hopefully) be over now that the super injunction scandal is hitting harder at so many British Nobs and Toffs.

But this stupid, Luddite old judge in the UK has got his judicial robes in a twist over the very obvious techno-legal time gap that has the Twitterverse all a-gush over trying to guess who’s got a super injunction in place preventing publication of details about their personal lives.

Attempts to identify a famous footballer hiding behind a privacy injunction have spiralled into an online battle over freedom of speech, as internet users responded to high court action by repeatedly naming him on Twitter.

The high court granted a search order against the US-based microblogging site on Friday as the lord chief justice, Lord Judge, warned that “modern technology was totally out of control” and called for those who “peddle lies” on the internet to be fined. (Guardian.co.uk)

It highlights once again the ever-widening void between rich and poor that super injunctions (whose very presence was itself suppressed until a few weeks ago) are available to those who can pay a high-priced whore-of-QC to front the Lords of the Court behind closed doors and tightly-drawn velvet curtains and get unsavoury details and incidents suppressed.

BTW: the footballer is apparently Manchester United’s Ryan Giggs, but that’s just a rumour I picked up on Twitter. I’m willing to repeat it because I don’t really care. I think Ryan Giggs is a great player, but the whole idea of banning coverage in the media via an all-inclusive and secret gagging order is disgusting. On balance, naming the celebrities and public figures caught up in this is the least of sins.

Giggs apparently spent 50,000 pounds on the injunction reportedly to keep his name out of a sex scandal involving a woman called Imogen Thomas who seems to be famous for taking her clothes off in lad mags like Zoo and Loaded.

Ms Thomas working hard for the money

Giggs probably didn’t want his family to know about his affair with her.

Now Giggs has outed himself by suing Twitter, Ms Thomas and several Twitter users who named him in tweets. According to the Guardian, it is possible a tabloid news organisation first leaked his link with Thomas and the superinjunctions.

A PREMIERSHIP footballer is suing Twitter and several of its users after information that was supposed to be covered by a super-injunction was published on the micro-blogging site. (The Scotsman)

Giggs was named by Spanish media ahead of the Man U v Barca UEFA Champions’ League final next weekend. Perhaps a little pride and niggle in that?

All I can say to that is “Idiot”. Did Giggs really think that suing Twitter was going to shut this matter down.

It seems that Ms Thomas was a former Big Brother contestant and she is upset that Giggs was able to keep his name out of the papers while she is the centre of allegations she tried to blackmail the Premier League player.

‘Yet again my name and my reputation are being trashed while the man I had a relationship with is able to hide.

‘What’s more, I can’t even defend myself because I have been gagged. Where’s the fairness in that? What about my reputation?

‘If this is the way privacy injunctions are supposed to work then there’s something seriously wrong with the law.’ (Daily Mail)

But, wait it gets worse. Now grubby politicians are getting into the act of breaking suppression orders and super injunctions. A Liberal Democrat in the UK has used parliamentary privilege to attack a merchant bwanker for an alleged sexual dalliance.

Lord Chief Justice Lord Judge criticised MPs and peers for “flouting a court order just because they disagree with a court order or for that matter because they disagree with the law of privacy which Parliament has created”.

Yesterday Lib Dem peer Lord Stoneham used the protection of parliamentary privilege to reveal allegations that former RBS boss Sir Fred Goodwin had taken out a super injunction to conceal an affair with a colleague at the bank. (epolitix)

Why are these people so ashamed of what they’re doing? The fuckers (and they are at it like rabbits) should either stop shagging with people they’re not supposed to or learn to live with the consequences of their actions.

Are we over it yet?

The most sensible #superinjunction tweet

Some numbers that don’t add up

My colleague Joseph Peart put together some numbers for me regarding the use of Twitter and they are interesting.

Stats from Fortune magazine, May 2, 2011 (pp42 – 45). “Trouble @ Twitter” by Daniel Roberts

• 47% of those who have Twitter accounts are no longer active on the service.

• The time spent per month has dropped from 14min 6sec in 2010 to 12min 37sec in 2011. (Joseph Peart estimates that if usage continues to drop at 1 ½ minutes a year; by 2020, there will be no Twitter users.)

• 40% of Tweets come from a mobile device.

• 70% of Twitter accounts are based outside the U.S.

• 50% of active users access Twitter on more than one platform.

• Not all Twitter users are tweeters: less than 25% of users generate more than 90% of worldwide tweets.

• Ashton Kutcher and Britney Spears have more Twitter followers that the entire populations of Sweden or Israel.

Then, from the book “Socialnomics” by Erik Qualman.

• We no longer search for the news the news finds us via social media.

• 96% of Millenials have joined a social network.

• Facebook tops Google for weekly traffic in the U.S.

• If Facebook were a country it would be the World’s 3rd largest.

• 60 million status updates happen on Facebook daily.

• 50% of mobile internet traffic in the UK is for Facebook

• It seems that Gen Y considers email passé, so some Unis have stopped distributing email addresses and are distributing eReaders, iPads and/or Tablets

• YouTube is the 2nd largest search engine in the world

• There are more than 200 million Blogs worldwide.

Eye candy: where’s the real target, Janet?

The opinions of bloggers make news. Welcome to News 2.0.

Former TV reporter, now media trainer, Janet Wilson, caused a small fuss when her blog post Eye Candy was reported in Saturday’s New Zealand Herald by James Ihaka. Of course one could observe (a tad cynically) that the story made it onto page 2 only because it could legitimately get the phrase ‘tits and teeth’ into the headline.

While the Herald story is not entirely sympathetic, no doubt Janet Wilson will be pleased, working on the principle that being talked about is better than not being talked about.

I for one made some effort to track down Janet’s blog; which incidentally doesn’t appear in the results of the Google search I conducted using ‘Janet Wilson Adjust your set’. I found it thanks to  Ele Ludemann  at homepaddock who had thoughtfully linked from her blog because the ‘adjust your set’ search term takes you to this post.

Anyway, in a round-about way that brings me to the point: Janet gives a spray and takes exception to the young, female faces on television because – in her opinion – they are all ‘tits and teeth’ and know nothing  much about journalism.

The implication is that they’re hired by middle-aged men who merely want ‘eye candy’ to a) decorate the newsroom and b) attract viewers to the evening news broadcast who share their taste in nubile wenchy-things who are ‘loved’ by the camera.

I’m not sure who the target of this diatribe is, but there’s plenty who can take offence.

Honesty again – whodathunkit! What do we do about the news?

There must be something in the water, or maybe there’s an optometrist involved. I’m not sure what the reason is but another nationally syndicated columnist has let fly at her reporter colleagues  this weekend.

The fun started when Tracey Barnett claimed most columnists were short-sighted egoists in the NZ Herald yesterday. Tracey’s lament was that columnists can’t see past the daily rush of ‘new’ and, when it comes to analysis, they tend to be pack-like in approach.

We get so sucked into the vortex of the endlessly hungry daily news machine, we begin to think every story is about the fight, not the resolution. Suddenly our job becomes declaring momentary winners and losers.

[All commentary, no analysis, all of the time, NZH 20 Feb 2010]

Now Rosemary McLeod in the Sunday Star Times is having a go at the shallow pool of news-celebrity culture and the fact that precious column inches are wasted on fatuous stories about the sex lives of newsreaders and their ilk.

[4pm Sunday update]: Sometimes it does take me most of the the day to get through the papers and so I’ve only recently come across Deborah Coddington’s column ‘Live in the public eye? Get used to being gawked at‘

Celebrity Privacy – Gossip isn’t journalism…or is it?

Is Alison Mau a lesbian?

Who cares. Perhaps we just need to get over our obsession with the sex lives of television presenters.Watch this clip from Breakfast, Aly Mau gives a serve to the women’s mags, particularly Woman’s Day.

Vodpod videos no longer available.

more about “In the women’s mags | News Video“, posted with vodpod

I can’t see the public interest in this issue. But I can imagine Alison’s children being taunted at school – we all know how cruel kids can be.

They also take a lead from their parents and the media.

This has become a big issue for TVNZ, Close Up waded into the debate later in the day

Vodpod videos no longer available.

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And this morning, Bill Ralston was interviewed on Morning Report. For once I think that Sean Plunkett got it right in his intro and his line of questioning.
This is an interesting spat between TVNZ and the gossip mags, but also perhaps indirectly, the Herald on Sunday, which on the weekend carried along piece by Matt Nippert justifying their outing of Mau in the previous week’s issue. It’s not online either, so I’ll dig my copy out of the recycling bin and take another look.
The debate seems to hinge on some sort of privacy laws and some commentators seem to be a little confused. There is no general right of privacy enshrined in privacy laws in New Zealand, or indeed in very few jurisdictions.
The general operating rules are that if you’re in a public place, your photo can be taken without your permission. The Privacy Act covers some types of information, but it doesn’t protect you from paparazzi (a swarm of annoying mosquitos in Italian).
The Privacy Commission’s top-ten-tips say nothing about how to protect yourself from unwanted media intrusion. I don’t think new and more laws are necessarily the fix we’re looking for. In the UK there are now restrictions on media coverage of the royal family, but not for the general public.
The recent John Terry case in the UK is also interesting. The way he tried to protect his privacy – actually his reputation and lucrative sponsorship deals – was by attempting to injunct publication of damaging details of his affair with the girlfriend of an England team mate.
And there’s a suggestion that Alison Mau also considered this approach to prevent publication of details about her new love life (if that’s what it is).
The Law Commission’s review of the Privacy Act is unlikely to bring any joy to those in the cross-hairs of the tabloids who want to limit their exposure to paid appearances and positive mentions.

Whale(b)oil Slater hooked?

I have no beef with Whaleoil, but I am interested in his ongoing court case.

Blogger Cameron Slater (aka Whaleoil) has got himself into a bit of legal trouble and inadvertently made himself bottomfeeder food for the “repeaters” of the “Lame Stream” media that he so detests.

Even so, one gets the impression that Whaleoil is actually enjoying his 15 minutes of notoriety.

My impres­sion of the court sys­tem for peo­ple on first appear­ance is that it was about as organ­ised as a free for all piss up at a South Auck­land pub on Fri­day night.

Then I went down stairs and was met by about 30 repeaters and cam­era guys and photographers.

Here is the results of all that.

NZ Her­ald

New­stalkZB

TV3

TVNZ

Stuff (Video at stuff)

Eat that Far­rar, Every news chan­nel is cov­ered includ­ing NZPA which I don’t have access to. I don’t think this is going the way it was sup­posed to.

His brief appearance on a handful of charges in Auckland today (Tuesday 5 Jan) was ironically in courtroom adjacent to that in which yet another entertainer (loosely-defined) was remanded on child sex charges.

Although I can’t help won­der­ing if it is pure coin­ci­dence that I appeared the very same day as the “Come­dian” also appeared. Part of me thinks that was a stitch up.  [Court @ gotcha…]

So far Mr Slater has repeatedly said he will defend the charges that he breached a number of suppression orders and published information that might tend to identify a person with name suppression. The charges refer to two cases: one that was recently before the courts involving an “entertainer” who successfully argued for name suppression on the grounds that his earning capacity might be affected adversely if he was named. The second case is current and involves a former New Zealand Olympian who is facing serious charges of assault and sexual assault.

In both cases Whaleoil identified the men who have name suppression using a series of pictorial images to stand in for their names. In the case of the entertainer (who copped a guilty plea and got off with a warning) even PM John Key claims to know the name; so there seems little point in continuing the charade that the name’s suppressed. However, it is permanently suppressed, which is lucky for the guy, but not so lucky for his victim.

In the second case, as I understand it, the pictogram was a little harder to decipher. However, on the face of it, an offence may have occurred. If you look at the relevant sections of the law, it seems fairly clear cut.

As I read it, in cases involving a victim of sexual assault, publication of details that might identify the person – even the name of the accused – can be suppressed. In the entertainer case this was not the reason, but in the ongoing case of the Olympian it appears to be the reason for suppression.

So hot. So Not!

This is just a chuckle piece.

The infamous Hollywood gossip-monger, Perez Hilton is now the subject of some interesting blogonews himself. Apparently he has been IMing with Jonathon Jaxson [sic] and there’s sex tapes involved.

Yuksville, chucksville, but don’t look away, car crash ahead! Jaxon seems obsessed with outing gay celebrities – what’s that about in 2008. It’s so yesterday.

I have no comment, check it out yourself:

Britney Spears – queen of the blogosphere

There’s little doubt that the story of Britney Spears’ disappearance with paparazzo Adnan Ghalib is garnering a lot of attention for the fruitcake singer and her sleazy boytoy (look at me sounding like those celeb-chasing tabloid types already).

The stuff is clogging up the blogosphere and taking up precious minutes in TV news bulletins.

someone is looking to milk this shit for all it’s worth. It might even be Ghalib’s photo agency, Finalpixx.
The finalpixx site has “exclusive” pictures of the couple and apparently the site didn’t exist a few days ago; it’s been recently launched to capitalise on the notoriety of Ghalib’s “fling” with Spears.

That’s it, I can’t write any more, but I had to do something.

media ethics, journalism

Is the world barking mad for celebrity trash

FOXNews.com – Paris Hilton’s Dog Food Can Sells for $305 on eBay; Toothbrush Goes for $305 – Celebrity Gossip | Entertainment News | Arts And Entertainment

What is it with people? Soft-core celebrity Paris Hilton’s trash is worth money.
Hey, if you want to buy some relics from my three cats, you’re welcome. Tilly, Josie and Lexie consume hundreds of cans of Purr, Dine and Mother’s Choice a month. You can have them all for $5.00 plus postage and handling.

media ethics, journalism

Celebrity picture wars – worth a mint

OK! wins Zeta Jones picture battle
A British magazine has won a House of Lords appeal against a rival publication that published photos as a way of ‘spoiling’ its exclusive deal with Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones to print images from their wedding.
The judges’ ruling is interesting. They decided that OK! magazine had paid for the right to impose a confidentiality agreement on wedding guests, one of whom is presumed to have taken the secret photos and sold them to rival Hello magazine.
So let’s put this in perspective:
Two rich bums decide they want to make money by selling pictures of their celebrity-splashed wedding to a magazine. They sign an exclusive and then impose a confidentiality agreement on their guests (are you following this Aunty Beryl?). A court agrees that because money has changed hands, the guests are bound by this dubious contract.
It seems to me that the rights of the wedding guests to attend said celebration, get pissed and behave like idiots have been infringed here.
A word of warning. If you’re planning a wedding, make sure you sign a confidentiality agreement with the photographer and ban your guests from taking happy snaps. Your exclusive with the Woman’s Weekly could be at risk.
If the worst happens, you could always take the guest’s cameras and feed them to that big sloppy dog on television who seems to like chowing down on the odd Canon sure-shot.

media ethics, journalism

A poor excuse for drinking – better than none!

Campbell: ‘I’m allergic to alcohol’ – Digital Spy:

This must be a day for dumbduck celebrities to make amends – not quite apologies mind. Alan Jones claim to be ‘sincere’ [see below] and now a supermodel who’s renowned for her tantrums when imbibing too much of the happy juice (in liquid and powder form) says it’s her ‘allergies’.
Take a bow, Naomi Campbell.

“According to BreakingNews.ie, Campbell has decided to give up drinking. She explained: ‘I choose not to drink today in my life because I find that I’m allergic to alcohol. I’m not someone that’s in denial of my problems and I’m not going to lie about my problems and I’m not hiding my problems.”

Denial? Naomi, you’re positively gushing! She hasn’t been in the news much since she finished her uber-fashionable gig as a cleaning lady – to atone for previous sins.

This is a blog about journalism and alcohol, but I’ve never stooped so low as to blame my love of martinis on a medical condition. Though I have been known to have one or two for purely ‘medicinal’ purposes.
In fact, I’m going to buy a bottle of reasonable gin and some olives on the way home. I’ve had a tough week here in the blogosphere, spent most of it at home in mi sick bed.
Now’s the time to live a little, before the allergies kick in.

media ethics, journalism