I am all for a free press, but......."

[Arachnophobic]

Sienna Miller having 10 men chase her down the road in the dark with their wide-angled lenses?

JK Rowling's 5 year-old having a journo's details planted into her school rucksack?

Madelaine McCann's siblings being scared in their own home due to the journos peering through their ground floor window?

WTF!!

Agreed Arachno, all these celebs have acknowledged that they accept that THEY are legitimate fodder being a public figure, & that a certain amount of press "interest" is to be expected.

However when it comes to behaviour that would be called harrassment if they weren't famous, when it involves their young children, then that is not on.

Quite how you stop them however is another matter!

Agreed Arachno, all these celebs have acknowledged that they accept that THEY are legitimate fodder being a public figure, & that a certain amount of press "interest" is to be expected.

Hardly think Gerry and Kate McCann fit into this category! And the Dowlings? The rest of them yes, ok, but really?

What worries me is not just what they print and the way they get that info but also what they don't print if that makes sense.

A journalist told me a while back that there are some "big stories" that people in power know about yet they never publish. I just feel the big media corporations manipulate what we know and what we think far too much and that scares me

"JK Rowling's 5 year-old having a journo's details planted into her school rucksack?

Madelaine McCann's siblings being scared in their own home due to the journos peering through their ground floor window?"

Seriously? That's awful, really, really awful and low.

Neither of those things have anything to do with having a free press though IMO. Harassing and frightening children for a scoop is not being a free press, it's being a pack of bastards.

No MrsS if you re-read that sentence I said "celebs" , I wasn't referring to the McCanns or Dowlings, who have the misfortune to be known for the loss of their children.

I also said that the paps behaviour would be considered harrassment if (as Sienna Miller has just said on the news) they weren't all carrying large cameras.

Free press?? Free to make it all up to sell papers? Is that what you agree with stranded?

All freedoms come with responsibilities. If you abdicate your responsibility, then you must accept that others need to step in to control just how much freedom you have.

Yes the press should be free, but not free to target children or persecute people who have done no wrong in order to peddle tittle tattle.

And phone hacking?

But trying to restrict their right to print a story is totally wrong

Their right ?

What about peoples right to live without being harrassed by paps?

stranded anyone cannot do what they did namely hack into the phone of young lass missing from home, making the parents think she was alive.

No one is suggesting that the press should be prevented from printing stories; the issue is how they go about obtaining information on which to (often loosely) base those stories. It isn't censorship to tell journalists that they cannot harass people and terrify children.

Stranded, how do you propose to solve the problem of the vile bottom scrapers? Or do you think that they really do have the right to continue unchecked?

I actually don't believe that JK rowing story - but there you go.

The people following and snapping Sienna Miller aren't journalists or press photographers - they're paps. They're not even trained photographers just chancers that have picked up a camera. Of course, if they get a great shot the papers will buy it - so they must shoulder their share of the blame too.
But newsaper editors aren't instructing their staff journalists and photographers to harrass celebrities day and night

But I am not saying muzzle the press, I just want there to be a code of conduct, and for there to be a line to be drawn over which the paps cannot step without redress.

Phone hacking & harrassment are not acceptable & it should be possible to write a decent piece of copy without resorting to those. Just lazy journalism to me.

There is a fucking code of conduct.

I am sickened by the depths that journalists have gone to in order to get a story. However, we should all look at ourselves and remember that the News of the World was the largest selling Sunday paper and whilst I didn't actually buy the newspaper (not for any saintly reasons, I just don't buy papers) I for one would stop and look at the headlines. There are too few of us who can truly say that they have not done the same thing with either this paper or any other publications and are therefore part of the problem.

I think from the OP that it's very clear that this thread is about the fact that having a 'free press' does not mean that they can do whatever they like. It simply means that they are free to decide what to stories to print without state interference.

"stranded anyone cannot do what they did namely hack into the phone of young lass missing from home, making the parents think she was alive."

I agree bossy, I wouldn't have the first clue how to hack into someone else's telephone messages and even if I did know how, I wouldn't want to and I wouldn't be able to look at myself in the mirror if I did, especially if it was in circumstances like Milly Dowler's.

Why aren't the journalists who commit these criminal offences (stalking, harrassment, dangerous driving, etc) prosecuted every time they break the law?