Tuesday, January 30, 2007

The couple that rehabs together stays together. Possibly.

Taking and publishing pictures of people emerging from drug rehab clinics can get newspapers into trouble, as the Mirror found out when it showed Naomi Campbell emerging from a drug treatment centre - the row over privacy went all the way to the House of Lords, and Piers Morgan's Mirror lost.

This morning, Victoria Newton seems unfazed by this case law as she runs photos of Pete Doherty and Kate Moss leaving "the discreet Capio Nightingale Hospital". Doubtless, Newton is hoping that Moss and Doherty's drug problems are in the public domain and thus they have no right to privacy.

However, even her own story ackonwledges the pair weren't seeking publicity:

They met staff who cleared a 12-place unit at an annexe behind the main hospital building off busy Marylebone Road.

The pair were recognised by passers-by as they arrived but registered for treatment using false names.

Let's hope Kate and Pete don't have any reason for wanting to make tabloids squeal a little - after all, this case seems to answer the same criteria which led to the Lords deciding in favour of Campbell:
Baroness Hale (who decided in favour of the Campbell) further states:

"It has always been accepted that information about a person's health and treatment for ill-health is both private and confidential. This stems not only from the confidentiality of the doctor-patient relationship, but from the nature of the information itself."

But we're sure Newton took all that into account, right?


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