The News of the World's desire to block publication of photographs of its totemic investigations editor Mazher Mahmood has turned out to be one humungous own goal.
Not just because the Sunday tabloid lost its single-minded legal campaign to keep images of the "fake sheikh" from the public eye. But more because of spectacle of the crusading paper's barrister mounting an all-out assault on freedom of the press in the high court yesterday.
In the paper's failed attempt to extend a high court injunction banning publication of the photographs, the News of the World barrister Richard Spearman QC argued that publication threatened Mahmood's safety, his ability to continue his undercover investigations, breached copyright, breached his right to privacy and was unfair and unlawful under the Data Protection Act.
Mr Justice Mitting rejected all these arguments - and suggested the real reason was more akin to the "protection of his earnings capability and publication of his investigative journalism and his utility to his employers in that respect".
What makes me angry about all of this is that in the News of the World's desire to stop the MP George Galloway from posting photographs of Mahmood on the web, the paper's barrister trod all over the freedom of speech rights journalists and their lawyers usually fight very hard to defend.
He even invoked the case of Naomi Campbell, perhaps the most notorious invasion of privacy case of recent times, who won damages after the Daily Mirror photographed her exiting a Narcotics Anonymous meeting.
"Why should you when you are photographed... not have a reasonable expectation that the image need not be reproduced in a newspaper?" Mr Spearman asked at one point, to general incredulity.
Mr Justice Mitting, hearing the injunction application, was moved to comment: "I share [Galloway's barrister] Mr Price's surprise that that argument is being advanced from your corner. Court 37 is full of people complaining about the newspapers daily."
At an earlier point the judge said to the News of the World barrister: "The partners of footballers are frequently photographed on shopping expeditions - you can't say that their privacy is being infringed."
Mr Spearman replied: "The answer is that it almost certainly is being infringed."
Does this mean the Screws is about to become a Colleen McLoughlin free zone?
Discussing the image of Mahmood in Arab garb, which an unnamed victim of a NoTW sting passed to Galloway, Mr Spearman QC said: "he never consented to being photographed, he never consented to it being published."
The News of the World even invoked copyright of the second image published by Mr Galloway, a passport photo. But as Mahmood had not taken his own passport photo, he couldn't really claim copyright over it. The paper tried to construct an argument that people who had a picture taken of themselves, in effect had a licence over how that image was used - even if they didn't own copyright.
I wonder if that attitude would cheer Dannii Minogue, who on February 5, found herself splashed across the News of the World front page after a night out at a London club?
In the high court yesterday the paper also tried to brush away the fact that the passport image of Mahmood had been published in the Observer in 2001 - an incident that prompted no legal action from the News of the World. "The fact that there has been a degree of publication does not destroy the value of the information or the privacy of it," Mr Spearman said.
Whatever you might think of the Screws, for a newspaper that prides itself on investigating and exposing celebrities, politicians, hypocrites, wrongdoers and criminals to mount such arguments in the high court will surely come back to haunt it.
