Tweeter To Be Prosecuted, Twitter Now Censoring?

Andy Smith writes "Slashdot has already covered the super-injunctions furore in the UK, with one famous footballer going after an anonymous Twitter user who broke a court order and revealed his extra-marital affair. Now another footballer has asked the attorney general to prosecute a well-known journalist and TV personality, who went against another super-injunction and wrote about this footballer, again on Twitter. Meanwhile, going back to the first footballer, it looks like he's got Twitter running scared, as the site is apparently blocking his name from appearing on the trend list, despite him being one of the most tweeted-about people."

Comments

Imogen Thomas

[Threni]

Just heard former Big Brother contestant Imogen Thomas has got a secret singing career.
Apparently she's been doing gigs in Manchester for ages.

Not the first time they've blocked something from

[teh31337one]

trending.

They stopped wikileaks from trending a while back too

A suggestion

[dwillden]

For those overpaid athletes: Don't want people tweeting about your affairs? Don't step out on your spouse. It's plain and simple. If they insist on being able to cheat on their wives then they should retire and leave the limelight so nobody will care.

Their fame naturally reduces their ability to live a private life. But they don't have to live that life, they could get a regular job and disappear into the crowd.

Re:A suggestion

[Anonymous Coward]

No one cares he's shitting on his wife and family. People are talking about this because he's abusing the law to hush it up. Had he ignored it, he'd only have to deal with his wife's divorce firm, and no one would be remotely interested in yet another Premier League player getting caught sleeping around.

Re:A suggestion

[DaveGod]

The flaw in your point is it's not proven he has been cheating and tabloid stories are nothing short of propaganda, it's a character assassination and the media is the weapon of choice.

In the UK, how it works is that the story is the story. Whether he has actually been cheating, eaten someone's hamster or whatever is barely relevant. It's a battle of PR clout.

These stories have very common themes: the male is some kind of famous, the girl is some desperate wannabe famous and is represented by Max Clifford. If the male is at the peak of his celebrity, it's a fair bet that he did not pay his protection money, er I mean is not employing Max Clifford and a PR firm is trying to snag him with a grappling hook in order to drag up their "victim" into the spotlight for fame and/or interview fees.

On the other hand, if the male is in danger of dropping off the radar, it's a fair bet that both he and the "victim" are employed by the same publicist and the whole thing is a ruse to get back into the spotlight. Like when "Freddie Starr Ate My Hamster" (see that wiki link).

(There are of course stories about females but the story is more varied.)

It's all very well to throw up the "free speech" banners, but I'm not convinced it applies when your speech is all about attacking another person for cheap personal gain and the media operates no journalistic controls at all.

Re:Where is this going to end

[iamhassi]

"Are you telling me that cheap gossip like extra-marital affairs of pro footballers will have to be leaked through wikileaks in the future?"

I'm less concerned about cheating football players and more concerned with overthrowing corrupt governments. Can a corrupt judge in a corrupt government simply say "don't talk about revolution" and Twitter will simply roll over and play dead? How would the Egyptian and Tunisia revolutions gone without the communication that Twitter provided?

Looks like we need a replacement for twitter.

Re:Slashdot is not UK based

[madprof]

The journalist is Giles Coren and the footballer is Gareth Barry. So I read on a website.
http://www.information-britain.co.uk/tweeters/user/47583067/

Re:Where is this going to end

[John Hasler]

> ...if it didn't happen in public it's not public information.

If it didn't happen in public the public would not know about it.