The long lens of shame

If I ran a newspaper - and this is probably why I don't - I think this simple phrase would be painted in three-foot-high red letters on the newsroom wall: JUST BECAUSE YOU CAN, DOESN'T MEAN YOU SHOULD.

Yes, legally you can get away with going into the background of crime suspects months before a trial. But should you?

Yes, you can get away with writing stuff in a headline which is completely untrue, so long as it is clarified in the story below. But should you?

Yes, you can wash your hands of internet comments by pretending you're not moderating them, allowing the general public to be libelled left, right and centre, only stepping in when someone complains, thereby pretending you haven't seen things which you clearly have. But should you?

I have no problems with journalists bending the rules when it comes to serious investigative practices. But most of the time, the victims of these sharp practices aren't crooks or villains or corrupt politicians, just Joe and Josephine Public who happen to have been in the wrong place at the wrong time. They are the people that newspapers should protect the most - yet they are in reality the most exposed, without the cash to instruct the big legal firms and with only the poxy PCC to protect them.

I don't buy the horseshit about celebrities either, that because they 'use the media' then they're fair game to target time and time again. Yes, some celebrities do indeed use the media, and go crying to Hello!, OK! or any of the tabs when they need a bit of cash by milking their 'private life'. But not all of them do. And because some do, that doesn't mean all of them are fair game to be targeted by shit like this, aimed at Billie Piper in today's Mail.

Could that be a baby bump you're patting, Billie?

I don't know, it's quite hard to see in that grainy long lens pap image you've paid a few grand for. Why didn't the photographer ask Billie herself? Oh that's right, he was hiding several hundred yards away, sneaking pictures of her in private while she was on holiday.

Studying her copy of the Girl's Own Guide to Being Famous, Billie Piper must have skimmed over the bit about avoiding pregnancy rumours.
Because gently stroking your slightly rounded tummy would have been top on the list of no-nos.

Yes, she should have known there'd be some long-lens parasite in the bushes taking pictures of her while she was touching her belly. Silly cow!

Miss Piper, 25, might simply have had a large lunch and been trying to settle her stomach - which was hardly bulging, after all.

She might just have been acting normally because she didn't know she was being photographed by your pap scum mates?

But her actions set tongues wagging among other holidaymakers.

Really? Or not? Or did it just set tongues wagging in your newsroom when you saw the photos?

You might be tempted to say: so what? Who's really being hurt here? Well, do you remember Lisa Marie Presley claiming she was forced to admit to being pregnant long before she wanted to because of a similarly barbed and breathless load of old bollocks in 'Femail'?

Surely whether a woman is pregnant or not is up to her and is an entirely private matter? Before someone's had their first scan, all speculation and discussion should be off limits - shouldn't it? It could be extremely distressing for someone to be forced to reveal they're pregnant, have to endure endless speculation, only to miscarry shortly afterwards or suffer other complications.

There's always a choice involved. Certain newspapers use long-lens pap pictures; others don't. Certain newspapers decide to speculate on other people's private lives, often to their intense distress; others don't. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should.

And spare me the 'well it's popular, therefore people must want it, mustn't they' bullshit. People slow down to look at road accidents. There were mass crowds at public executions. Yes, human beings are intrinsically curious creatures. But you have to make a choice as to what rights of privacy you respect. Or whether you decide to respect no rights at all.

*slight update*

What I didn't mention earlier, because I tend to avoid The Sun as much as is humanly possible, is that they printed these disgraceful pap pictures also. As well as some tasteful shots of Billie Piper taking off her bikini top. I think the journalistic reason for these pictures was so that a few readers could masturbate furiously while looking at her breasts, though I'm not quite sure what was said in the editorial conference, obviously.