Academic

Celebrity Drug Habits: Public or Private?

By Jacqueline Lipton

With thanks as usual to Patricia Sanchez Abril for drawing this case to my attention, I was intrigued by a small issue when reading the 2004 British House of Lords decision in the Naomi Campbell case.  This case involved the unauthorized publication by the Mirror newspaper of details of Campbell's drug problems.  The case is interesting in itself as a discussion of the then relatively new task of British courts to balance free speech and privacy interests recently revised in British law under the Human Rights Act of 1998.

What particularly interested me about the case, though, was the concession made by all parties that the British newspaper had a right to publish a story confirming that Campbell had drug problems, despite her previous public protestations to the contrary.  The case then focused on the extent to which particular details about her treatment should be protected as confidential. 

I am interested in the rationale supporting the concession that the paper had the right to publish the fact of the drug addiction effectively under the auspices of "public interest".  The reasoning was that the media had this right because Campbell had publicly denied having a drug addiction in the past and had favorably compared herself to other models who did have such problems  - assertions that turned out not to be true.  It was suggested by several of the judges that if Campbell had not made these public comments, the fact of her drug addiction might have been properly protected as confidential, but that, given her comments, the Mirror was justified in running a story to tell the public that her comments were untrue.  (The question for the court was how much latitude the paper should have with respect to details and photographs of her specific treatment.)

My question is whether it is necessarily appropriate to say that someone effectively loses the right to privacy or confidentiality because they have represented that they do not have a personal and sensitive problem that in fact they do have?  What are they expected to do when asked by the press whether they have a drug habit?  Does society really expect such people to tell the truth publicly on such a sensitive issue?  And do we feel differently about these questions depending on whether the subject of the disclosure is a celebrity versus some other public figure like a politician?  In other words, would we be more concerned that someone with governmental responsibilities may be impaired by a drug problem than someone whose career is in the entertainment field and whose problems do not have the potential to put important political decisions at risk?

I'm not sure that I know the answers to any of these questions, but I'd be interested in what other people think.  And I do acknowledge that the different laws in England and the United States may well lead to different thoughts on these questions.  For example, in the United States with the longstanding First Amendment speech guarantees, people may have very different perspectives than in England where the notion of a free speech/free press right is a relatively new thing.

Full post as published by The Faculty Lounge on June 19, 2009 (boomark / email).