Monday, 2 July 2012

Press Complaints Commission: Right Back Where We Started From

'The number of warnings issued about the behaviour of newspaper journalists harassing and intruding into the privacy of celebrities and members of the public is creeping back to the levels before the Milly Dowler phone hacking scandal erupted.
'Complaints judged serious enough to be taken up by the Press Complaints Commission had fallen dramatically in the second half of last year after the Leveson inquiry was set up in July...
'Media legal expert Jonathan Coad also said those cases which resulted in formal letters from the commission were only "a small proportion of the problem".
'Coad, a partner at Lewis Silkin solicitors, said among the other cases he has dealt with were a journalist who tried to interview a child with special needs through the letterbox of his home about his parents' marriage; a celebrity whose neighbours were offered £500 cash if they would sign a witness statement saying she was a bad mother; and a TV star who after being told a story about him being gay would be published tried to kill himself – a story which was leaked apparently by somebody in the ambulance ringing a newspaper with the tipoff.
"From inside red-top [tabloid newspaper] land, initially they did feel the sap taken out of them by Leveson, and their behaviour was consciously improved," said Coad. "[However] my feeling and anecdotal experience is the initial effect has passed."

Media Guardian
Is this the TV star's suicide bid they mean?

No comments:

Post a Comment