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| Wednesday, 27 March, 2002, 18:35 GMT Piers Morgan's statement in full ![]() Mirror editor Piers Morgan arrives at the High Court Mirror editor Piers Morgan responds to supermodel Naomi Campbell's victory in her privacy action against the newspaper.
The judge has declared, 'The public had a need to know that Naomi Campbell had been misleading the public by her denials of drug addiction. 'And balanced and positive journalism demanded the public be told Miss Naomi Campbell was receiving therapy for her drug addiction.' I was under the impression that we had exposed her as a drug addict after she repeatedly lied about it and that she was having treatment The judge said we had every right to do that.
Apparently the offending words that brought us to this farcical court case were, 'Narcotics Anonymous', which is the world's most famous treatment centre for drug addiction. So I am at a loss to understand what her case was. She is apparently claiming victory on privacy, when in fact she abandoned all claim to invasion of privacy before the trial even started. So she has lost on privacy. She has won on a very small technical point of law in relation to confidence, which we will be disputing. She has won the massive sum of �3,500, which by anybody's yardstick is an embarrassingly small, derisory sum of money. One of Naomi Campbell's colleagues said that supermodels do not get out of bed for less than �10,000. So she has not even got enough to pull back the bed clothes, which makes it even more ludicrous.
The judge has made it quite obvious that he does not expect these cases to end up in his High Court again. It is a waste of his time. It is a waste of our time. In the end, Naomi Campbell has achieved what? She has achieved, in her words, 'a landmark ruling' that says in future when I am presented with a story about a world-famous star who has been lying about taking drugs, who is a drug addict, we will simply have to expose them and not show any compassion or any sympathy by revealing the details of their brave treatment. It is a complete nonsense. I am quite happy to expose them. I thought we were doing her a favour. We will consider an appeal, obviously.
To be honest, I am just bored with the whole thing. I only wish the judge had put an order on us never to mention Naomi Campbell's name again. Because just the mere thought of having to write any more stories about her drives me mad. I also would like to read this out from the judgment, which says, 'I must consider Naomi Campbell's evidence with caution. 'She has shown herself over the years lacking in frankness and veracity with the media and manipulative and selective in what she has chosen to reveal about herself. 'I am satisfied that she lied on oath.' So Naomi Campbell, while she cracks open the champagne today, may consider the prospect of getting a knock on the door from the police in relation to two matters. One, that she has been a regular class-A drug abuser for many years, which is a serious criminal offence. And secondly, she has lied under oath. | See also: Internet links: The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites Top UK stories now: Links to more UK stories are at the foot of the page. | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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