The news that Tiger Woods has successfully obtained injunctions preventing the UK media from publishing information widely available in the USA is another blow for freedom of speech.
While the lurid details of the Woods saga are not really too savoury – although it is impossible to sympathise with someone who has earned hundreds of millions from selling a wholesome image – the issue is that again the UK’s draconian libel laws have been used to silence opinion.
What is the bigger issue is that wonderful firms such as Carter Ruck (see <I>Private Eye</I> most weeks) earn huge sums from using the UK system to silence crictism of some of the world’s most odious regimes. Woods is about one man’s fall. But when the law is used so often to silence valid debate and examination then the government has to step in.
If things continue to slide at the rate they are then issues such as the MP’s expenses scandals would never see the light of day.
The crazy thing is that the law means the papers cannot even hint at what they cannot report or report that the injunction has been granted.
Speculation is that it concerns the alleged UK affair. And yet a surf shows the following in Australia: “British media yesterday named TV presenter and former pin-up Kirsty Gallacher, a household name there, as a friend of Tiger’s.
She is now married and pregnant. But in an interview several years ago when she was single, she described him as “wonderful, kind and talented – not to mention incredibly handsome”.”
Meanwhile, such an injunction has limited value in this day and age. Surf the web and find out what the authorities don’t want you to know. And stick a cyber two fingers up at the lawyers and judiciary. And then there’s always good old Fox News, available on most satellite channels 24 hours a day!
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LONDON, Dec. 11 (UPI) — A law firm representing Tiger Woods said a British court issued an injunction that forbids the publication of nude photos of the professional golfer.
The Schillings law firm said the injunction granted Thursday by the High Court in London would block the release of any nude photos of the U.S. golfer should such images exist, CNN reported Friday.
“For the avoidance of doubt, this order is not to be taken as an admission that any such photographs exist, and in the event that these photographs do exist, and it is not admitted, any such images may have been fabricated, altered, manipulated and or changed to create the false appearance and impression that they are nude photographs of our client,” Schillings said in a letter to publications in Britain.
The court’s ruling comes in the wake of allegations that Woods, 33, had extramarital affairs.
The married golfer, a father of two, who was involved in a single-car accident in Florida last month, has admitted to unspecified “transgressions,” CNN reported.