Twitter user reveals celebs who tried to suppress affairs
A model walks the ramp during a fashion contest at the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest on Sunday. PHOTO: AFP
Britain on Monday was abuzz with details revealed by a Twitter user about the celebrities who had used super-injunctions to suppress reports in the media about alleged extra-marital affairs, visits to prostitutes and even sexual harassment.
The messages by the user, who set up the account on Sunday, on the microblogging site, attracted more than 30,000 followers by Monday morning and the revelations, many disputed immediately, were discussed widely on Twitter.
One of the massages falsely claimed that socialite Jemima Khan, former wife of Pakistani cricketer Imran Khan, had obtained a gagging order from the court to stop publication of her photographs.
Jemima denied the allegation and posted on Twitter: “OMG — Rumour that I have a super injunction preventing publication of ‘intimate’ photos of me and ****** NOT TRUE!”
The revelations have re-energised the ongoing debate in the UK over the use gagging orders by celebrities to prevent the media from reporting of their private lives.
Helen Wood, the 24-year-old woman who had been identified by the British media as being part of a gagging order to prevent identity of a married actor being made public, said on Monday that though she did not support the gagging orders, the Twitter revelations were not helpful.
“Injunctions have been put there for a purpose. Obviously, I don’t agree with them and I am certainly not a fan of them by any means, but to publicise them like that on Twitter without actual proof... I think they are doing the wrong thing,” Helen Wood told BBC Radio 5 Live.
Senior British journalist Andrew Marr’s had made a startling admission last month that he had used a super-injunction to suppress reports of an extra-marital affair.
British Prime Minister David Cameron last month warned that the judges were creating a new privacy law rather than parliamentarians.
“The judges are creating a sort of privacy law whereas what ought to happen in a parliamentary democracy is Parliament, which you elect and put there, should decide how much protection do we want for individuals and how much freedom of the press and the rest of it. So I am a little uneasy about what is happening,” Mr Cameron said in April.
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