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A married Premier League football manager has been caught visiting a brothel - but the British Press cannot reveal his identity on human rights grounds.
The soccer boss, a family man with children, was witnessed entering and leaving the building on a shabby industrial estate where Thai prostitutes offer sex for £130 an hour.
Within hours of the story breaking in The Sun, football fans' websites were flooded with speculation about his identity. Many contributors accurately named him and his club.
Yet despite this placing of his name in the public domain in a way easily accessible to millions, newspapers are effectively barred from publishing it because of a creeping law of privacy laid down by judges over the past five years.
MPs and lawyers protested yesterday that the rules of privacy have become an intolerable burden on freedom of speech and are winning Britain an international reputation for censorship and suppression of information.
It has reached the point where the wealthy from abroad are indulging in 'privacy shopping' to shield them from reporting in their own countries.
Yesterday, The Sun published a story telling how the manager spent more than an hour in the brothel, which advertises itself as a massage parlour. He arrived dressed in training clothes featuring his club logo.
Confronted by reporters outside the building and asked if he knew it was a brothel, he said: 'Yes.'
But if the Sun or any other newspaper published his name, it could face the threat of a hugely expensive privacy action in the courts. This is despite the majority of the public finding the manager's indulgence in vice immoral and offensive. In addition, a number of deep public interest concerns are raised by the incident.
So who was it, then?
The soccer boss, a family man with children, was witnessed entering and leaving the building on a shabby industrial estate where Thai prostitutes offer sex for £130 an hour.
Within hours of the story breaking in The Sun, football fans' websites were flooded with speculation about his identity. Many contributors accurately named him and his club.
Yet despite this placing of his name in the public domain in a way easily accessible to millions, newspapers are effectively barred from publishing it because of a creeping law of privacy laid down by judges over the past five years.
MPs and lawyers protested yesterday that the rules of privacy have become an intolerable burden on freedom of speech and are winning Britain an international reputation for censorship and suppression of information.
It has reached the point where the wealthy from abroad are indulging in 'privacy shopping' to shield them from reporting in their own countries.
Yesterday, The Sun published a story telling how the manager spent more than an hour in the brothel, which advertises itself as a massage parlour. He arrived dressed in training clothes featuring his club logo.
Confronted by reporters outside the building and asked if he knew it was a brothel, he said: 'Yes.'
But if the Sun or any other newspaper published his name, it could face the threat of a hugely expensive privacy action in the courts. This is despite the majority of the public finding the manager's indulgence in vice immoral and offensive. In addition, a number of deep public interest concerns are raised by the incident.
So who was it, then?
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