The Leveson Inquiry: "Privacy Is For Paedos"

"'Privacy is for paedos," declared former News of the World man and tabloid veteran Paul McMullan in the midst of his evidence at the Leveson inquiry. He had only just observed that "in 21 years of invading people's privacy I've never found anybody doing any good" – statements that together amounted to a credo for the brutal Sunday tabloid world of which McMullan became the chief spokesman in the otherwise stifled confines of courtroom 73.
"The public interest, he said, added up to no more than the sheer number of copies the News of the World could sell. "Circulation defines the public interest" – which meant that everything was legitimate as long as the public bought the paper. "You have to appeal to what the reader wants – this is what the people of Britain wants. I was simply serving their need," he said, before describing a career of capers justified by the observation that "you just don't go up to a paedophile priest and say, hello good sir, you are a priest, do you like abusing choir boys?" Which, he argued, apparently gave cause for a culture of blagging, surveillance, and even phone hacking, although he stopped short of incriminating himself on that one...
"McMullan paid one "rent boy" £2,000, then dressed up as another to expose a priest. Having snapped the picture of the reverend in flagrante, the two ran off in their underpants "through a nunnery at midnight" to get the story safely into the paper. "That under Piers Morgan," McMullan said..."

It was only spanking, incidentally.
The Leveson Inquiry closes for the christmas recess today.
Swings, roundabouts...
Maybe Fagburn should do, too.