If anyone doubts that rugby league is treated differently to any other code in the country - soccer has a similar claim - then read this:
https://www.bignewsnetwork.com/news...graphers-deployed-by-telegraph-to-ambush-dogs
Team of photographers deployed by Telegraph to ambush Dogs
SYDNEY, Australia - Is the National Rugby League (NRL) and the Australian public right to be shocked at the events of last Monday when one two footballers were photographed after stripping off, and another was photographed vomiting?
The NRL rightly claims the image of the game has been diminished by the publicity that has flowed from it.
There are however perhaps more serious questions to be asked rather than focusing on the apparently drunken behaviour of a team of footballers letting off steam after the winding up of a pressure-packed season. That is not shocking. It is not called ‘Mad Monday’ for nothing. This is an annual ritual for players who keep a strict discipline for most of the year, commencing with pre-season training which for most clubs commences in October each year. The one day when they can relax, consume copius alcohol and let their hair down is this day. What is shocking is that The Daily Telegraph deployed a team of highly skilled photographers with telescopic lenses to spy on the unsuspecting group, apparently in the hope that some indiscretion would occur from which they could profit from and exploit.
During several hours of espionage, the team could only catch their prey out for the duration of a Neil Diamond song. The DT article was emphatic, the player or players took their clothes off and danced during the duration of the song (3 ½ minutes). There was no question they stayed in a state of undress. There was also a photo of a player looking as though he had dozed off on a chair. There was another one of a Bulldogs player lying down, seemingly asleep. There was another photo of a player vomiting. Each of these photos described “a Dogs player,” or “a Bulldogs player.” Nowhere did it make it clear, all 3 photographs were of the same player. So in summary, you have one or two players strip off while dancing to a song, one player dozing off and vomiting, and that’s the sum total of several hours of spying on them.
The Harbour View Hotel is a quiet neighbourhood pub in a residential area of The Rocks, in the heart of Sydney. There are nearby terrace houses, and just up the road are the Sirius apartments, the only residential tower within cooee of the hotel. It has been closed for several months and is roped off, awaiting its sale and likely demolition.
The Canterbury Rugby League club apparently has its annual Mad Monday wind-up at the hotel every year. They book the first floor restaurant, which is sometimes used for private functions. The hotel is now the subject of widespread publicity, and serious charges and fines under the Liquor Act, brought about because of the barrage of publicity.
Foxtel commentators argue these are footballers who people pay to go and watch, so they can’t complain about “intrusive media.”
We would argue they are entitled to a degree of privacy. Their club had organized a gathering in a private function room, not open to the public.
When one or two players shed their clothes while singing and dancing to the Neil Diamond classic, “Sweet Caroline,” with only their mates in attendance, one could hardly claim that was offensive or obscene behavior, which police have now charged the players for. When Prince Harry did the same thing six years ago at a private function in Las Vegas in mixed company, there was no public outrage, the prince was not fined or charged. Nor was the monarchy hit with a $250,000 fine.
And
The Daily Telegraph’s coverage was nothing like what it dished out to the Bulldogs this week.
The Australian public, the NRL and the police all seem to have overlooked the fact that the furore that followed the Mad Monday incident damaged the game, not the incident itself. If the players had been left to themselves, as they and their club understood was the case, there would have been no scandal. The police confirmed at the time there had been no complaints. The hotel reported it had received no complaints from other patrons.
The fact that you had The Daily Telegraph stake-out and spy on this group, and capture what to the players was probably regarded as a harmless prank, and then publish those photographs on its front page and throughout their newspaper, and other News Corp newspapers in other states, and across their extensive stable of online websites, and their social media platforms, and their 100%-owned broadcast networks Foxtel, Fox Sports and Sky News was the problem. No-one can argue it was the very public exposure of the photographs that brought the game into ill-repute.
It is our estimation that the chances of anyone from the public actually getting a glimpse of nude footballers on that day would have been close to zero. You would have to be walking up the hill past the hotel, towards the (abandoned) Sirius apartments at the exact time when this brief incident occurred. Knowing the foot traffic on this road is somewhat negligible it is quite probable that no-one saw anything. But through the actions of The Daily Telegraph, photographs of the incident have saturated the media generally, as other publications and television have piggy-backed on the back of The Daily Telegraph ‘exclusive.’
All of the media are to blame, perhaps with the exception of
Fairfax, and there are some serious issues at stake here. Firstly, you are not allowed to photograph people in the nude without their consent, regardless of the circumstances. And secondly you are not allowed to publish photographs of nude people without their permission. Irreparable harm has been done to the footballers, their club, and the NRL. The players in particular have been humiliated and their reputations and livelihoods severely impacted.
When Andrew Ettinghausen was photographed having a shower in the locker room on a Kangaroos tour in 1990, and a photograph was published in HQ magazine which was then-owned by Kerry Packer, Australian Consolidated Press was sued for defamation. Ettinghausen told the court he was not asked his permission to be photographed in the nude, nor was he asked if the photograph could be published. He said the
photograph was taken without his knowledge and held him up to ridicule. He won the case and was awarded $350,000 by the jury for defamation. Packer’s company appealed the case, however the appeal judges remained firm on the verdict, but revised the damages down to $100,000. Nonetheless $100,000 in 1993 when the case was finalized is probably equivalent to an amount in excess of the $250,000 the Canterbury membership, which had nothing to do with Monday’s events, was fined this week. Canterbury too
lost its long-time sponsor Jaycar on Friday as a result of the exposure of the photographs.
What is interesting is that when the Ettinghausen verdict came down, the media went berserk. They realized the decision had repercussions for the bigger picture. The media believe they are entitled to intrude on people’s private lives, if they are celebrities.
“The media response to the decision was one of incredulity and derision,” D Rolph of the University of Sydney wrote in a summation of the case. “Given the media response, Hunt CJ at CL felt compelled, two days after the jury verdict, dealing with an application brought by ACP for a stay pending an appeal, to take the somewhat unusual course of castigating the media for their reporting and analysis of the jury verdict, accusing them of unbalanced reporting of the outcome of the case arising out of their vested interests.”
In the case of the Canterbury get-together they were not aware there were professional, some may say predator, photographers lurking in the bushes opposite their hotel, ready to take advantage of them. If the photographers were caught by police, they would probably now be facing charges of being peeping toms.
The second thing we should be looking at is whether the newspaper has engaged in stalking. Why is it that professional photographers appear to be immune from stalking and invasion of privacy laws? This wasn’t one or two photographers either. The Daily Telegraph sent a team of three photographers to cover the event: Toby Zerna, Justin Lloyd and Christian Gilles.
A fourth photographer, Davis Swift, was over at Manly’s Mad Monday, no doubt hoping for a scoop there. The Manly players, as is well known now, were in fancy dress. The players did not ask to be photographed, and one would assume were not asked for consent in having publication of photographs of them in costumes being published, however numerous photos of them accompanied the initial story about Canterbury, dragging them into the debacle. It was a classic case of guilt by association, and all they were doing was minding their own business and having their once-a-year day-off.
