Hard Pressed
Flirting with the media for career purposes is a perilous business. As David and Victoria Beckham realised this week, you cannot have your cake and eat it (although from the look of her, I doubt eating cake is high up Victoria’s list of priorities). An eleventh-hour legal struggle to prevent The News of the World from printing eight pages of salacious gossip about their struggling marriage failed. And quite right too.
For when things take a turn for the worse, celebrities who usually revel in the media spotlight should not have recourse to limit the actions of the press. Many people are quick to chastise the press for their coverage of icons such as Princess Diana – some even willing to blame her untimely death on the paparazzi. Yet it is blatant hypocrisy to rebuke the purveyors of such low-brow ‘infotainment’ on the one hand, whilst purchasing papers and magazines full of the stuff with the other.
It is also blatant hypocrisy for personalities to resort to legal proceedings to avoid the spotlight when they typically spend so much of their time ensuring it remains firmly fixed on them. Where there is legitimate public interest, the press should be allowed to report the warts that celebrities fail to conceal. Yet there is a fine line to be drawn. Invading the privacy of someone who courts publicity and invading the privacy of someone who does not are two very distinct things.
Maxine Carr is an interesting case in point. Thrust into the limelight through her involvement in the manslaughter of two young girls, the press continued to pursue Carr even after she had served her prison sentence. Interest in Carr is to be expected. But those who claim that her crime – perverting the course of justice – legitimises publishing details of new aliases she is given step over the mark, given this would undoubtedly put Carr’s life at risk.
Having served her sentence, Carr should be protected from excessive media interest as she struggles to reintegrate into society. But celebrities like the Beckhams abdicate their right to such protection. The Beckham Brand, spawned from the same monster that now seeks to destroy it, has afforded the couple untold riches and opportunities that many people can only dream of. For some, the media poses a far greater threat to life, and livelihood.
It is these people that the law should protect, and not the egos of the glitterati.
28th Apr 2005