Yep, it’s the big picture I’m interested in. The Jefferies case, which I recall being genuinely shocked about, was the one that prompted me to read the legislation and some of the then extant case law. The legislation and various Judges subsequently have acknowledged that they are trying to balance two “incompatible, competing” things - an individual’s right to privacy vs the press’ right to report.
The judge in the CR case has exhaustively examined the chronology of events that led to the reporting, and the meeting between the BBC and SYP (as well as various internal meetings), and various emails, and concluded that the facts of this particular case demonstrate that CR wins.
Some other snippets: he was scathing about the reliability of some of the BBC witnesses; where a fact was disputed as between the SYP version of events and the BBC version, he has plumped for the SYP version - most significantly in a phone call between the journalist and the SYP media relations person, and subsequently in a meeting between the journalist and the SYP. In a disturbing development, as part of the BBC case, they said that the SYP were involved in a conspiracy and that notes that had been made by the SYP participants 2 days after the meeting, had in fact been made over a month later when the shit had hit the fan. He examined this assertion in detail and called a resounding BS; he also found that at no time in their decision-making process did anyone at the BBC consider CR’s privacy rights - despite openly acknowledging that they knew that their reporting would likely cause him significant damage.
It’s entirely clear that he doesn’t consider the BBC or any of their employees to be evil people - rather, he believes they were cavalier in their approach, motivated almost entirely by their desire to keep the scoop.
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