Media and Journalism, Privacy, Prostitution, Sex, Sex Scandals, United Kingdom / Great Britain

Max Mosley Fights for Right to Be Told About Nazi-Orgy News Stories in Advance

By  
on

Max Mosley, former head of international motorsports organization FIA, has been fighting with British tabloid News of the World for almost three years. In 2008, News of the World published a story about Mosley’s raunchy role-playing rendezvous with five sex workers, in which they played prison guards to his naughty prisoner. One of the sex workers had a camera supplied by the tabloid, so the story had a graphic video component. The News of the World focused on the fact that the sex workers spoke German throughout the role-playing, and thus described it as a “Nazi orgy.”

Not only was Mosley miffed to be part of a sex sting story, he said News of the World mischaracterized his sex fantasy. He said it was just a German prison camp, not a Nazi German prison camp (a crucial distinction — especially given that his father was Oswald Mosley, head of the British fascists, who did associate with Nazis).

Max Mosley sued News of the World for defamation and invasion of privacy. He won his case and was awarded nearly $100,000 plus legal fees. Heil yeah.

But by that point, it was too late to undo the reputational damage….

“You can’t say his name without someone having a bit of a snigger,” is the way media law expert Duncan Lamont put it to Bloomberg. We journalists can be the greatest danger to an individual’s privacy. We run stories on people whether they like it or not. Mosley didn’t realize he was going to be the subject of the erotic exposé until he saw the paper on newsstands.

Now, he’s on a crusade. He wants news organizations to have to let high-profile subjects know in advance when a story about them will be run, so that they have the opportunity to fight it. He took the case before the European Court of Human Rights on Tuesday, arguing that celebs deserve better privacy protection against British tabloids.

Sponsored

Will the Court sympathize or tell him to bugger off?

Read on at Forbes.com….

Earlier: ATL International: ‘We were just role-playing a German prison, not a Nazi German prison.’

Sponsored

Topics

, , , , , , , , , , , ,