David Cameron has weighed into the debate over super injunctions saying that the legal muzzling of newspapers is “unfair” and “unsustainable”.
Speaking on ITV’s Daybreak, Cameron said of the current super injunction laws: “It is rather unsustainable, this situation, where newspapers can’t print something that clearly everybody else is talking about.
“But there’s a difficulty here because the law is the law and the judges must interpret what the law is.
What I’ve said in the past is, the danger is that judgments are effectively writing a new law which is what parliament is meant to do.”
Cameron’s comments come just as newspaper editors are seeking to have married footballer CTB’s super injunction overturned by the High Court.
CTB, a footballer who allegedly had an affair with ex-Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas (pictured), was splashed all over the front page of Scotland’s Sunday Herald newspaper yesterday with nothing but a black strip over his eyes to protect his anonymity.
The super injunction footballer’s name has already been named and shamed on various internet forums and social networking sites but English newspapers are unable to publish any details.
Cameron went on to say that the proliferation of Twitter and other social networking sites have altered the way the press operates.
“It’s not fair on the newspapers if all the social media can report this and the newspapers can’t, so the law and the practice has got to catch up with how people consume media today,” he said.
“But I don’t think there is an easy answer on this. Perhaps the way through is to look again at the Press Complaints Commission, the work it does.”
“If people can have more confidence in that then we could have less of this current approach.”
