So the status quo, then? What we have is not acceptable. We have commoditised private life – with enormous cost. The story of the Watson's is just utterly tragic and depressing. So too of Mosley's son. The grotesque treatment meted out to the like of Christopher Jeffries – it is absolutely unacceptable.

Mind, I keep asking (and people keep avoiding – and this is not aimed at you specifically, Andy), what about the responsibility of those who buy the tripe? They're at least as culpable and at least as pathetic as those who write and publish it. Without them, there's no market ...

Status quo in the short term, but the more this story runs and grows the louder the clamour is going to become for a "proper" privacy law. The press may want to start thinking very carefully about how it is seen to behave, lest it reaps the consequences by having to operate with one hand behind its back in future.

You haven't been listening to the Colombian president again have you? That's like blaming the users for the drug trade - just because someone buys Heat magazine once a week doesn't make them responsible for Milly Dowler's phone being hacked.

I wouldn't be so keen to describe someone as "pathetic" on the basis of their reading choices either - different strokes for different folks, as Max Mosley might have said...

I've no love for that slapper at all, but when it comes to access to her son, I think she's actually in the right. She's the one who's shagged her way to fame, not him..

There was a good article in the Guardian by [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/law/2011/nov/21/leveson-inquiry-investigative-journalism-lawalex bailin[/url

There must be a balance and the treatment of the Dowlers was inexcuseable. However, if it comes down to a choice between upsetting a film actor, or curtailing good investigative journalists and their abilities to root out corruption, then I'd be firmly in the journalists' camp.

For me, the star of the Leveson Inquirey is Robert Jay QC. I certainly enjoyed his gentle admonishments to Hugh Grant, that opinion, supposition, or what his friends believed were not actually evidence......

So that'll be 95% of his case filed in the waste paper bin then!

She's also the one who's been quite happy to play on the fact he's severely disabled in newspaper and magazine stories when she's wanted some public sympathy...

When reading choices have an impact on the life of someone that one is reading voyeuristically about ...

Would you, for instance, think that those who read terrorist manuals or materials designed to encourage terrorist acts have no responsibility for what their reading choices are or the impact that the publication of those might have?

Different strokes, etc.

Personally, I have no comprehension of why anyone wants to spend money buying any of the trashy gossip rags that have grown up like weeds in recent years.

Why do people want to read the details of other's lives – whether those who do not parade their private lives or those like Katie Price who do?

Why? Someone explain it to me: why do you care? What right do you have to poke your nose into their lives? What do you get out of reading this trash that improves your life and how?

You talk of "treatment". What was different about the "treatment of the Dowlers that you say (rightly) was inexcusable and the treatment of the Watsons or the treatment of Mosley? Or yes, of Grant?

If the treatment was "inexcusable" in one case, why not in others?

I hardly think Al Qaeda are worried about circulation figures, at least no more than Nuts magazine are encouraging jihad.

A poor choice of comparison.

I'll say it again - the readership of NoTW, or its kind, should not be held responsible for the actions its owners and managers took (or turned a blind eye to) in order to obtain stories, particularly given that they weren't aware of the methods that were being used at the time to gather information.

You may as well criticize the Fritzls neighbours for not reporting to Social Services that two old folks were going through a wheelbarrow of food between them every week.

Rumours that James Murdoch has resigned.....

Edit - turns out it's just as director of the companies that publish The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun

Very good point ... defining precisely what is in the public interest is tricky.
We all "know" but would have difficulty defining it.

Nonetheless, we have had statutes before (About whistle-blowing) where the reasonable-ness of the person's belief in it being in the public interest was a key factor.

Comedy is subjective, I am not a great fan of his, but for the papers to tap his phone to get hold of 'tittle tattle' is simply wrong.

someone should start one call Twatter, just for the likes of him

A poor choice of comparison, one might say, Andy.





If nobody bought a publication – of any variety – then it would cease to publish. There has to be a market there. Now there's a history of salacious publications in the UK, so when loads more hit the shelves, it hardly came out of nowhere.

Now I'm not going to start with chicken and egg – because I wouldn't know where to start – but it is a fact that without the market for gossip and salacious, intimate details of people's lives (given voluntarily or otherwise) there would be no such publications.

While people might well have not suspected over the use of the so-called 'dark arts', it occurs to me that people were frequently paying to read about the details of the private lives of people who did not want those details revealed. Let's take the Mosely case as one example: did people really buy the [iScrews[/i that weekend. and for the follow up, in the belief that Mosely had invited the cameras into that aspect of his private life?

So I return to the question of why people think they have a right to be entertained/titillated by such details and secondly, why they find that so entertaining?

Oddly, your mention of the Fritzel case suggests that people snoop (or twitch their curtains) or should do, and should actually pick up on something as ordinary as shopping – even when (presumably) amounts increased over a long time and were a regular factor. Indeed, what you seem to be suggesting is that all of us should snoop – that, in this context, we should all become obsessed with the private lives of others. The Stasi would have loved you.



I would add that the drugs comparison doesn't really work either (or at least not fully). Although it's fairly simplistic a view of a more complex case, most of those who grow or sell drugs do so in the knowledge of what they're doing and, for whatever reason, having presumably reached a conclusion that they will do that.

So that puts the consumer in a rather different relationship to the producer than it does where someone's private life is invaded, without their permission, and then sold for the entertainment of others. That is not to say that there is no ethical complexity to the relationship between drug producer, seller and consumer, but it is clearly not the same.

is he not invited to your next fancy dress party

Why would anyone want to tap their phones

I think its hilarious the way the way the print media are howling in indignation about whether Grant and Coogan's allegations are 100% accurate. Talk about giving it out but not being able to take it.

Its undoubtedly the case that some celebs ask for what they get. And Hugh Grant is never going to attract much sympathy. But it does seems to me that the tabloids treatment of celebs ultimately created the climate where they felt they could get away with their appalling treatment of the Dowlers and Chris Jeffries. If the good guys are to be protected from the worst excesses of the media, those protections are going to have to be extended to everyone, including the celebs. And it should be possible to introduce reforms without curtailing the ability of the press to undertake genuine investigative journalism.

alternatively, he [url=http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/arts-%26-entertainment/britain-prepared-to-forgive-grant-for-his-films-201111224572/"could be forgiven for his entire career"[/url

Aye, the Hugh Grant comments were fantastic. Most of his films are trite but I was in admiration at his attempt to scandalise the [iDaily Mail[/i who have probably peddled more lies than Hitler over the past 100 years or so. Hopefully some of Grant's words will stick although I'm not hoping for that much given their reader's inability to think.

Good article [url=http://www.guardian.co.uk/film/2011/nov/22/hugh-grant-leveson-phone-hackinghere from the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw on Grant's contribution to the debate[/url.

How true as I almost have lol.

I thought you shared similar interests in your spare time!?

Good point, well made.





I think that, as has been said already, there's a big difference between someone who is well known for their work – and someone who actively courts media attention for every aspect of their life.

Indeed, indeed. Although [iRemains of the Day[/i was very good.

To paraphrase from Fawlty Towers, you started it.





I'm not defending the tactics or methods of the gutter press, but what I will defend is their readership from the insinuation that somehow Milly Dowler's phone being hacked and her parents being given false hope is as much their fault as it is that of Rebekah Brooks, James Murdoch, Glen Mulcare or any of those others at NI and NoTW who chose to turn a blind eye to what was going on.

Oh, I do know that.



I would never, ever excuse the people you mention – and quite a few more. But quite serious question: do you think that we, as consumers, have no ethical responsibility to consider what it is that we buy?