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Super-injunctions debunked
By Steven | May 10, 2011
If you want to know what’s going on with so-called “super injunctions” (that is, court orders that not only suppress particular information but also suppress the fact of their existence), I suggest you don’t read the British press. Or anything that comes out of it. The British papers are so incensed by the idea of the super injunction that they are incapable of reporting that super injunctions are very rare, are usually plainly justified (because they deal with blackmail, for example), are usually very short-term, are often not even challenged by the media, and almost always involve information that is of no conceivable public interest.
Some of the ballyhoo has been about the “super injunction” granted to journalist Andrew Marr, who has now outed himself as the plaintiff. In fact, that was never a super injunction, just an ordinary one, and was reported on at the time it was granted. The wire-sourced Stuff article I’ve linked to above gets this wrong (a Stuff-up?). As does this other one in the NZ Herald (no fancy pun for that).
Topics: Injunctions | Comments Off on Super-injunctions debunked