‘Dull doesn’t sell newspapers. Boring doesn’t pay the mortgage.’ Thus did Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre begin his speech to the Society of Editors. He proceeded to give a masterclass in exactly what he meant. No nuance clouded his demonisation of the Human Rights Act or of Mr Justice Eady. After all, sensation sells speeches just as much it shifts newspapers.

Dacre’s speech was, in fact, much like his newspaper: eminently entertaining, often thoughtful, occasionally unpredictable and not above substituting incoherent rant for logical argument. He ended his speech by acknowledging that it would precipitate ‘all too predictable deprecations’. He was right. Dacre and the Daily Mail got acres of free exposure. In particular, out came the Guardian’s heavy artillery. The speech was criticised by Lord Lester, Geoffrey Robertson and Polly Toynbee. The BBC gave him considerable airtime – even though he had taken the trouble to traduce the BBC as the bloated corpse of ‘the subsidariat’. Dacre is nothing if not a pro.

The speech as a whole is a very personal tour d’horizon of the issues facing the media at the present time. Dacre has some reasonable things to say: as lawyers, we should consider the impact of conditional fees that mean damages of £5,000 are payable in a libel case in which costs top £500,000; the Freedom of Information Act is a major advance in the transparency of government and must be defended.

The core of the speech, however, is elsewhere. Dacre argues against those who, as a schoolmaster once said to him, only see the dog dirt at the base of the lamp-post. His fundamental proposition is: ‘The British press is having a privacy law imposed on it, which – apart from allowing the corrupt and the crooked to sleep in their beds – is, I would argue, undermining the ability of mass-circulation newspapers to sell newspapers in an ever more difficult market.’

And the personification of the forces of darkness that brings this allegation alive? Mr Justice Eady. Dacre chooses to go for Mr Justice Eady largely for his judgment in Max Mosley’s case against the News of the World. In doing so, he tells a good story – it is just a pity about the facts. The court hearing was notable for the progressive disintegration of the News of the World’s case. The newspaper sought to justify stories on two successive weeks that ran under lurid headlines.

The basis of the claim was that a prostitute, subsequently known as ‘witness E’, filmed a sado-masochistic event involving Mosley. These images were published by the News of the World. Witness E ultimately declined to give evidence. The case collapsed because, on its facts, Mr Justice Eady just did not accept that there was a Nazi theme to the somewhat bizarre events that undoubtedly did take place. As a result, he ruled that Mosley’s right to privacy overrode the public interest in the publication of pictures. On the facts that Mr Justice Eady found, the News of the World just did not have enough to sustain the slant of its story.

Dacre does not attack the judge’s findings of fact, he objects to his articulation of the law. The Mail editor does not want freedom of expression balanced against a right of privacy. He neglects, however, to note that the Press Complaints Commission’s own Code of Practice contains much the same test as the European Convention. The code requires accuracy (article 1), respect for privacy (article 3) and no use of clandestine methods or subterfuge (article 10). The last two are subject to a public interest exception that ‘includes, but is not confined to… detecting or exposing crime or serious impropriety’.

Dacre waxed lyrical about the family values transgressed by Mosley’s behaviour. It certainly made a titillating story for a family to read around the dinner table, but the use of prostitutes in sado-masochistic role-play is hardly ‘serious impropriety��. The evidence suggested that the group of prostitutes involved were rather jolly about the whole thing. They were not coerced. They did not see themselves as exploited.

Dacre claimed that the News of the World was exposing ‘unimaginable sexual depravity’. After a career that includes stints at the Express, Standard and Mail, Dacre’s imagination surely stretches to worse, and the allegation of serious impropriety was impossible to sustain without the Nazi connection that linked Mosley with the activities of his fascist father, Oswald. That was how and why the story was sold.

Thus, Dacre’s argument falls down on its facts. The News of the World said this was a Nazi-themed orgy that mocked concentration camp victims. Put to proof, they could not sustain their allegation. Dacre, however, rushed to join those whipping up hysteria over the Human Rights Act.

But the balancing act between rights of privacy and freedom of expression is unavoidably at the core of any foreseeable approach in this sort of case. What is more, the principles of the European Convention would remain binding on the UK and enforceable through the European Court of Human Rights, whatever the fate of the Human Rights Act.

Dacre concluded by urging that we should ‘stand up for the illumination at the top of the lamp-post’. This was a somewhat dazzling exhortation if the Max Mosley story is to be placed at the pinnacle of modern journalism. We could, however, have done with rather more light and less heat from Dacre, even if, in consequence, he would have had rather less fun, and been much less newsworthy.

Roger Smith is director of law reform and human rights organisation Justice.