LONDON (AFP) — One of the most powerful editors in Britain reignited a row over privacy Monday, accusing a judge of bringing in a privacy law "by the back door" in a ruling involving world motorsport chief Max Mosley.
Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre singled out High Court Judge David Eady's decision in favour of Mosley against a rival newspaper which reported he took part in a Nazi-themed sado-masochistic orgy with prostitutes.
In a speech to the Society of Editors in Bristol, Dacre said Eady had been given a "virtual monopoly of all cases against the media enabling him to bring in a privacy law by the back door.
"If mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don't have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process."
The "public shaming" of high-ranking individuals had long been a "vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour," said Dacre in his speech, delivered on Sunday.
Mosley, son of 1930s British fascist leader Sir Oswald Mosley, won 60,000 pounds in damages in July against News Group Newspapers, owners of the News of the World, a popular Sunday tabloid.
The Daily Mail -- one of the most widely-read in Britain with a strong conservative bent -- has a circulation of over two million. Dacre, its long-time editor, rarely speaks publicly -- adding to the attention given to his remarks.
Charles Falconer, who was the de facto justice minister from 2003 to 2007, defended Eady on Monday, saying that "society now puts a value on privacy.
"Of course, if I'm acting hypocritically or I'm accountable, or there's something that may affect what I do in my public life which emerges from my private life, that should be published," he said.
"But there are things which are private and just as we don't want the state to know everything about us, do we want things that are legitimately private to be made public? I don't think we do."
Prime Minister Gordon Brown saw Dacre's speech as "an interesting and useful contribution to the debate" over privacy laws, Brown's official spokesman told reporters Monday.
Separately on Monday, actress Sienna Miller accepted 35,000 pounds in damages and unspecified legal costs from News Group over a "series of intrusive articles and photographs" in the News of the World and its daily sister paper The Sun.
The papers acknowledged, in a letter to the 26-year-old, that she "had a reasonable expectation of privacy in respect of the information and the photographs that we published".
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