Twitter user tries to expose celebrity injunction details

A TWITTER user has set up an account claiming to expose celebrities who have obtained injunctions to prevent reporting about their private lives.

The messages on the microblogging site were apparently an attempt to get around gagging orders supposedly taken out against the media.

By yesterday the user had attracted more than 62,000 followers and the content of the posts was discussed very widely on Twitter.

But the messages contained serious errors, including a false claim that socialite and campaigner Jemima Khan had stopped publication of pictures of her with Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson.

Khan wrote on Twitter: “Rumour that I have a superinjunction preventing publication of ‘intimate’ photos of me and Jeremy Clarkson. NOT TRUE!”

There is growing disquiet about celebrities’ use of injunctions and “superinjunctions” — whose very existence cannot be reported — to prevent publication of details about their private lives.

British Prime Minister David Cameron has warned about the way judges are creating a new law of privacy rather than parliament doing so.

BBC presenter Andrew Marr revealed last month that he took out a superinjunction in 2008 to prevent reporting of an affair.

On Thursday, an injunction was granted to a Premier League footballer who apparently wanted to hide an affair with an 18-year-old model from his wife.

A committee examining the use of injunctions to bind the media was set up in April last year by Britain’s Master of the Rolls and is expected to report later this month.