Public vs Private – A Lesson for Katie M
Good evening ladies and gentlemen, my name is codemonkey24601, and tonight I will be teaching you the meaning of the words "public" and "private". We have a special guest tonight – who, because she thinks she has an absolute right to privacy no matter how public a place she is in, will be known by the code name Katie M.
So – before I get started, does anyone need the toilet? Have you all turned off your mobile phones? Then I’ll begin.
PUBLIC
If you are walking down the street, you are in public.
If you are in a bar, or a fair ground, or a beach in The Caribbean, then you are in public.
PRIVATE
If you are in your own home, you are in private.
If you are in someone else’s home, you are in private.
There is also an argument to be made that if you are in hospital, or other "protected" areas, you are also in private. (Despite the fact a hospital is a public building, I would argue that you have a reasonable expectation of privacy while you are there).
PUBLIC INFORMATION
If you go on TV and tell everyone your weight, height, DNA make up and if you are pregnant, that is public information and people pretty much have a right to do what you want with it.
If you are walking down the street, talking in a voice loud enough to be overheard by other people, then – to some degree – I would argue that that is also you giving out public information.
If you think you are tweeting one person and you tweet 100,000 followers, that is also public information, because while it might have been accidental, it is still pretty much down to your broadcasting your personal information rather than anyone else taking it from you.
PRIVATE INFORMATION
If you leave a message for your friend/partner/son/daughter/etc on an answer phone, that is private information.
If you are talking to your friend in private (see above), that is private information.
If you are talking with a doctor/nurse/lawyer/barrister/MP/etc in the privacy of an office (and so on) that is private information.
The voice mail of a murdered school girl is private information.
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You would think this would be an easy concept to understand, but the British Press (in fact, the whole of the British news broadcasting media) seems to be utterly incapable of understanding any of those definitions.
For years – decades – the press has been intruding on the private lives of people simply to sell more papers. A truly odious man named Paul McMullen seems to think that he had an absolute right to hack in to people’s phones because "the people have a right to know" and because it helped him sell papers.
He, and the rest of his ilk, behaved so badly that the government and the judicial system was forced to step in and take action – to hold an inquiry in to the behaviour of "the gentlemen of the press" and try to sort it out.
(The fact they failed is a whole other topic for discussion, but one that no doubt I will come back to later).
However – in an attempt to suck up to The Palace and to The Government, the press are now completely ignoring the definition of "public" when it comes to one woman. And yes, Katie M, I am talking about you.
While I will grant that the first set of photos were clearly an invasion of privacy – anything that requires a telephoto lens is usually an invasion of privacy – the second set (published today) can not be described as "invasion of privacy" by ANY definition of the term.
They were on a PUBLIC BEACH in a PUBLIC PLACE when the photos were taken. There were dozens of other people – people who were not related to them or employed by them . In short – members of the public also on a public beach.
I can not think of a single definition of "private" that could include that situation, and yet the British Press are all "UP IN ARMS" and "FURIOUS" about this "BLATANT INVASION OF PRIVACY". ITV has even issued a grovelling apology for showing an unblurred copy of the picture, and I suspect all the other papers and broadcast news are going to fall in line, bowing and scraping and tugging their forelocks.
Yet the moment they get pictures of Katie Holmes, Kristen Stewart or Dakotta Fanning in a bikini on a beach, do you think they will hold back? Do you think that when "celebrities" are prancing around in the foam or walking along the sand on their "private" holidays, they would even think twice about publishing the pictures?
No – they won’t. They’ll publish them and talk about them and not even consider that they are guilty of such a double standard it is not even funny).
Britain, as a country, is supposed to be moving to a more egalitarian state. Where the situation of your birth is less important than what you do, and the wealth of your parents doesn’t matter as much as the actions you take.
However, over the last decade or so, and especially over the last two and a half years, we have nearly regressed back to the 18th century, when the rich would live life to the full and everyone else would work "downstairs" and be grateful for anything we are given.
And, quite honestly, this latest obsession of the press of showing overt deference to Katie M and her fellow royal parasites is just the latest example of this backsliding to the "good old days" of all out class-warfare.
They are giving this spoiled, pampered girl a level of protection on one else would ever receive, just because she happens to have married in to one family rather than another, and they are showing a mind-bending level of hypocrisy while doing it.
But – to come back to the original topic of my lesson today – I will give you more examples.
If I am talking with Jane about my upcoming operation and someone else walks though and overhears us, that would be my fault since we are talking in public.
But if Jane and I go off into a conference room and close the door, and that same someone uses the phones to listen to us, that is their fault because we are talking in private and they are listening in.
If Mr Famous and Miss Celeb decide to get married in St Pauls, and photographers take pictures of them along the route and going in and out of the cathedral, that is clearly a public area and not an invasion of privacy.
But if they get married in a private mansion and someone uses a telephoto lens and a helicopter to take photographs, that is clearly an invasion of privacy for which they should be punished.
And if Mr and Mrs Spoiled-Prissy-Pants are in a private mansion and decide to frolic around naked, that is their choice because they are in private.
But if they walk along a public beach, with other members of the public, and have their photo taken, then there is no way it can be called an invasion of privacy,a nd anyone who says different either needs to go back to school to learn the proper definition of the word "private" or they need
to stop sucking up and being such hypocrites.
Thank you for coming – that is all I have to say. For homework, I’d like you to study the work I have given you and see if you can work out why the press are such utter hypocrites and just how they can get back to being decent human beings instead of the scum of the earth.
(The second part of that is clearly theoretical, since I don’t believe it will actually happen).