Paul Weller Bests The Mail

In Flat Earth News, Nick Davies said of the Daily Mail: “the story is published; the subject of the story then complains and is confronted by the wealth and cleverness of the Mail which will fight them right up to the point of final defeat, when, if need be, it will surrender and offer some kind of deal. And then the pattern repeats, because the penalty is no match for the rewards of the behaviour which is being penalised”.

Paul Weller

There is no better example of this than the Mail’s response to complaints from former Style Council front man Paul Weller, who objected to having his children “plastered” over Mail Online. Apparently “The seven unpixelated pictures appeared in October 2012 after a paparazzo followed Weller and his children on a shopping trip in Santa Monica, California - taking photos without their consent, despite being asked to stop”.

The Mail’s publishers, Associated Newspapers, trotted out the usual line: “Associated said they were innocuous and inoffensive images taken in public places, and that the Wellers had previously chosen to open up their private family life to public gaze to a significant degree”. Slebs bring the attention on themselves and are therefore fair game.

But Mr Justice Dingemans “ruled that there was a misuse of private information and a breach of the Data Protection Act which merited an award of £5,000 to Dylan and £2,500 each to the boys … He said that the photos were published in circumstances where the children had a reasonable expectation of privacy – and the balance came down in favour of finding that the right to respect for private and family life overrode that to freedom of expression”. That was last year. So the Mail just appealed.

The paper claimed that Weller was trying to establish an “image right”, which “would have far-reaching adverse effects on the freedom of the media in this jurisdiction”. What did Weller’s side have to say to that? “David Sherborne, for the Wellers, said that the appeal raised no new points of law and the judge’s decision was simply the application of a set of facts to well-established legal principles”.

And so it came to pass that the Mail’s appeal was thrown out by Master of the Rolls Lord Dyson, who observed “The fact that a child's parent or parents are celebrities or public figures may not, without more, be relied on to argue that the child should have a lower reasonable expectation of privacy … The child's reasonable expectation of privacy cannot be different from that of a child whose parents are not in the public arena, unless the parents have courted publicity for the child”. And there was more.

Associated was refused leave to appeal to the Supreme Court - the chance to fight all the way before admitting defeat - and was ordered to pay Weller’s costs. Mail Online could have admitted it got it wrong, said sorry and taken the photos down, but that is not the Mail way. And Weller bested them because he could afford to risk it.

The Mail’s idea of press freedom: screw the little people, and as many of the rest as they can out-appeal in court. Remember that next time you hear their hacks playing the victim.