socialmedian: Trafigura, Twitter and public interest

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Source: guardian.co.uk Politics

Oct 14, 2009

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Your excellent editorial (14 October) missed one essential point about the so-called super-injunction to which you were subject: the order was unlawful.

The courts are public authorities under the Human Rights Act. A court must exercise its remedial jurisdiction in a manner compatible with convention rights. In cases such as yours a court must reconcile competing convention rights. On the one hand is the company's right to privacy, in the form of confidentiality, and on the other is freedom of expression, in this case the freedom of the press to report on matters of public interest, and on parliament. Reporting such matters is the essence of the watchdog role of the press in a democratic society. One would have thought that only a most compelling reason would justify a court issuing a coercive order limiting such an important right. But it is difficult to see what that justification was in Trafigura's case. Remarkably, the court went further, negating the right to freedom of expression by imposing a blanket ban. Such an extreme form of prior restraint is incom

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