Carina Trimingham: on the limits of a right to privacy

We all have a right to a private life. The press shouldn't stalk us or publish private details to sell stories. Added to this is the way in which editors and owners have used such techniques to attack enemies who are not in the media (media types never attack each other as they have a truce) isn't nice.

 

However sometimes things conspire to remove the right to a private life. The case in point is Carina Trimingham, the one time lesbian, and partner of Chris Huhne. Now she took the Daily Mail to court for damages after publishing details of her sex life and affair with Huhne. At the time both were married to women.

 

Under normal circumstances I'd be against the Mail but not in this case. And this isn't about my dislike of Huhne.

 

She, through her own actions, has given up her right not to be talked about in the press. Not because she is going out with a politician but because that politician got elected using literature bragging of his happy family and how his marriage was the best thing ever. At the same time he was screwing Carina. Worse Carina was one of the people who developed the winning strategy of pushing the happy marriage to win votes. The hypocrisy and their making of fidelity and marriage a public political strategy removed the right to privacy if it emerges that all this spin is simply a lie.

 

It is justified that the press talk about the affair.

 

More than that the fact that Carina has made a lot of money leaking stories of other peoples private and sex lives to the press compounds this.

 

By her actions and choices she has made her private and sex lives a justifiable press story.

 

I don't care about others sex lives or private affairs. But there limits to this. This case shows when such rights stop and it becomes justifiable to report on both.