Dirty and dated? Why 'Wagatha Christie' Could Be The Last Defamation Case Of Its Kind

If the intrusive coverage of the lives of footballers' wives and girlfriends (known as Wags) was a creation of the tabloids in the 2000s, then the 'Wagatha Christie' libel lawsuit acted as a season finale for this particular era of celebrity culture.

The endless WhatsApp messages sent by Rebekah Vardy - in which she explained how she would like to divulge stories to newspapers, told The Sun about a footballer's arrest for drunk driving and spoke about his dealings with paparazzi photographers. collaborated with his agent, Caroline Watt, this sounded more like a historical account than an accurate depiction of today's media world.

It was clear the duo believed that this was hugely beneficial to Vardy's public profile for her to have a strong relationship with tabloid reporters. What was less clear was why they put so much emphasis on it. At best, Vardy could earn a few thousand pounds for providing a story (she texted her agent with a tip with the note "I want to pay for this x"), or the hope of favorable coverage in the future.

Vardy also seemed to operate on the belief that a legal victory in the High Court would exonerate her in the court of public opinion. Instead, she discovered that there is no public relations agency in the country - and no court ruling - that can match the internet's ability to turn serious legal arguments into an event. of pop culture where everyone is forced to take sides.

< p class="dcr-3jlghf">Almost all of the quotes and evidence from the seven-day trial in May were captured on screen or turned into memes for quick delivery to UK WhatsApp groups or parades on Twitter.

The way Coleen Rooney controlled her public persona was more in line with the approach taken by the modern celebrity influencer. Giving evidence, she made clear her hatred for the tabloids and paparazzi photographers who had stalked her since she was Wayne Rooney's teenage girlfriend.

Au Instead, she expressed the expectation of privacy she felt she had when it came to her social media accounts – and how the law struggled to keep up with modern internet standards.

Rooney applied a two-pronged social strategy. On one side was his locked private Instagram account where a few hundred close acquaintances, including Vardy, were trusted to see his family life unvarnished.

The general public was then allowed to see a handful of posts disinfected on another Instagram account. In Rooney's mind, it was morally unacceptable that the line between private and public accounts had been crossed, when the stories from the personal account ended up in the Sun.

Even the deployment of Rooney's public accusation against Vardy was very modern. She told the court that she carried out her sting operation in complete secrecy without telling her husband, writing the statement herself and only sending it to her brother to format it before post it directly to Instagram.

While a media lawyer from a mainstream outlet might have sprinkled Rooney's text with a few adjectives such as "allegedly" or "apparently" was her direct line saying that she had concluded someone was responsible - "It's .. ......... Rebekah Vardy's account" - that caused her made infamous.

Yet the law has struggled to keep up with changing public attitudes toward privacy and defamation. Based on the public response to the case, some are still puzzled that Rooney's social media post could be held to the same journalistic standards as an article on a mainstream news website – even though Rooney's publication was read by far more people than most newspaper articles. .

But perhaps more damning for the media is that Rooney and her husband are working on a documentary around the case, with their full cooperation. Celebrities are realizing that it is not necessary to collaborate with external media to get their message across and it is much easier to retain editorial control.

While a footballer's modern wife or girlfriend still cares about media coverage - and some still leak private information to reporters - they are just as likely to build a much larger following on TikTok and Instagram, where y...