A model of private respectability

She may be famous, but Naomi Campbell says she's entitled to privacy. To prove it, she's taking the Mirror to court, but editor Piers Morgan couldn't be happier, says Guy Adams

Special report: human rights in the UK

The Guardian, Monday February 26 2001

Poor Naomi Campbell. The 30-year-old supermodel has never enjoyed a great press, but lately her stock has fallen to a new low. Now she finds herself on top of Fleet Street's celebrity hit-list, embroiled in an increasingly acrimonious legal dispute with the Mirror.

It all started earlier this month, when she was spotted taking part in the increasingly popular celebrity sport of therapy. Blurred, long-lens pictures of Campbell leaving a Narcotics Anonymous meeting in Fulham were splashed across the Mirror's front page, alongside an article describing her "courageous bid to beat her addiction to drink and drugs".

Incensed by the article, Campbell got her sometime PR agency, Freud Communications, to set up an exclusive interview with the Sunday Times, in which she announced that the Mirror ("a struggling tabloid newspaper") would be served a writ under the EU's new Human Rights Act.

Thus the celebrated clothes-horse became the first person to use the new legislation against a British newspaper. She is unlikely to be the last: under the act, which came into force last October, any member of the public will have their human rights infringed if a publication intrudes on their private life, where there is no public interest.

The law was first tested by Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones against Hello! magazine last November. The couple successfully convinced the Court of Appeal that Hello! had a case to answer for printing unofficial photographs of their New York wedding.

That case continues, and is less than straightforward: Douglas and Zeta-Jones had previously sold the picture rights for the wedding to OK! magazine for £1m. Hello! argues that this compromised their right to privacy.

Campbell's case is also vulnerable. Just two days after her Sunday Times interview, she threw a celeb-packed party at Mr Chow's restaurant in Knightsbridge to launch her own brand of perfume. "It's a MIRACLE!" yelled the Mirror. "In the greatest comeback since Lazarus, Naomi Campbell recovers from the appalling stress caused by our revelation ... to shamelessly flog her new perfume."

To Mirror editor Piers Morgan, the badly timed party came as no surprise: "If you took any typical week in Naomi Campbell's life over the past 10 years you'd find something like this," he says. "She is one of the most shameless self-publicists in celebrity history, and has thrown herself into the public eye like no one since Marilyn Monroe. Frankly we couldn't choose a better test case than this one."

Morgan says that his original article was run sensitively, and in cooperation with Campbell's Elite model agency: "We could have done a come-on, asking people who had snorted coke with her to come forward, but we didn't. It was a very sympathetic article and I am amazed that she took such exception."

He also argues that drug-taking is an illegal activity: "It is against the law and when someone, a role model, breaks the law the press have a duty to expose them."

This last argument has been well-used, but it does cast the addict as a criminal rather than victim. In her original Sunday Times interview, Campbell argued (albeit without mentioning drugs) that press exposure can damage a victim's chances of recovery.

"When someone is having medical treatment, they should have a right to privacy," she said. "I'm doing this for everyone out there who needs and wants to keep their anonymity when dealing with something like overeating, anorexia or depression."

Anyone who agrees (and there are plenty of experts that do) will be pleased to learn that now that the new Human Rights Act is in place, the right to privacy is virtually guaranteed to become enshrined in English law.

If Campbell, Douglas and Zeta-Jones do not succeed, then someone else will. At this point a precedent will have been set, making the Press Complaints Commission's current privacy rules more or less defunct.

A High Court ruling delivered by Dame Elizabeth Butler Sloss last month granted anonymity to the killers of James Bulger under article two of the new act. It should be treated by the newspaper industry as a whole, and paparazzi in particular, as something of a warning shot.

But for now, at least, the Mirror's howitzers will remain firmly trained on Campbell. Last week came the news - reported in every national newspaper - that she had been banned from the Voyage fashion boutique for being rude to staff. No doubt Piers Morgan could hardly believe his luck.