The 62-year-old plaintiff insisted he was unaware that a camera was recording him making whoopee with Mrs. Love Sponge, which he testified had occurred only because he was depressed that his marriage was falling apart.
Leaving aside the question of whether having sex with your best friend’s wife is a treatment for depression recommended by the American Psychiatric Association, the trial speaks to an important issue about privacy rights and freedom of the press in a world where privacy is a rapidly vanishing commodity.
In his opening statement last week, a lawyer for the Gawker team told the jury that videotapes featuring celebrities like Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian engaged in sex have become a “cultural phenomenon,” and that such images are of interest to the public and therefore protected by the First Amendment. (In later testimony, the editor of Gawker conceded that there were some limits to that. For instance, he wouldn’t post videos of celebrity children involved in sex … if they were under the age of four).
As a journalist, I naturally and fully embrace the protection provided to my profession by the First Amendment, which gives me the right to express my opinions in pieces like this one without fear of government censorship. But I can summon up nothing but contempt for lawyers — or “news” media — who can’t, or don’t care to, tell the difference between “of interest to the public” and “in the public interest.”
If an elected official is accepting bribes, it’s “in the public interest” to know and therefore is protected by the First Amendment. If he prefers to wear underwear from Victoria’s Secret in the privacy of his own home, it may be “of interest to the public,” but it’s really nobody else’s business and therefore nothing but sleaze. For reasons beyond my comprehension, the doings of Paris Hilton and Kim Kardashian clearly are “of interest to the public,” but it’s hard to imagine anything they might do that’s really “in the public interest” to know about.
And any claim that it’s in the public interest watch a video of a celebrity — even those over the age of four — having sex is as phony as a WWF smackdown.
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