Imogen Thomas and Ryan Giggs
British privacy law has come under close scrutiny in the last month after names of people who had taken out super-injunctions were revealed on micro-blogging site Twitter. The centre of the story focuses on Ryan Giggs taking out a super-injunction to prevent details of his extra-marital affair with reality television star Imogen Thomas being made public. However since the revelation of his name in Parliament, Giggs has become the ‘poster-boy’ of the privacy law debate and the story has spiralled. The question is, are legal methods more effective for managing scandal than public relations?
British privacy law allows people to take out injunctions, or ‘gagging orders’ to prevent information or comment being published. Super-injunctions are a relatively new phenomenon, restricting the press from even discussing that a injunction has been taken out. In the case of Giggs and Thomas, The Sun published that Thomas had had an affair with a married footballer but were unable to print Giggs’ name. The rumour mill went into overdrive, culminating with Twitter user ‘InjunctionSuper’ stating the names of several people who had taken out gagging orders. The press still were unable to repeat the names, until Liberal Democrat MP John Hemming named Giggs under parliamentary privilege. Giggs threatened to sue Twitter and the users who had posted his name, but it would be impossible to find all 75,000 people who had published it. If anything, this claim added extra ridicule to the story.
Many public relations experts, including Max Clifford and Paul Smith, believe that if the scandal had been managed rather than gagged, Giggs’ reputation would have remained in tact. Clifford told ITV programme Daybreak that the Manchester United player highlighted the relationship by taking out the injunction. Smith said that using the injunction had thrown ‘gallons of fuel on the fire’.
My own experience in public relations has taught me that the first rule of crisis management is to come clean and apologise. If Giggs’ had released a statement admitting his wrongdoing and apologising to other parties involved, such as his family, then the likelihood is that yes, his reputation would have taken a slight hit as he has always been considered one of the ‘good ones’ in footballing circles, but that would have been the end of it. Fellow players such as Wayne Rooney and John Terry have both been in the middle of extra-marital scandal, but their reputations have largely recovered and they are known first and foremost as footballers. In contrast, Ryan Giggs is forever going to be associated with one of the biggest legal controversies of recent years.
I think it is clear that the answer to my original question, ‘Do super-injunctions equal super PR’ is no. The British press are always hungry for scandal and in the current legal climate it is likely that the story will be revealed somehow.
