GOOD POINT ABOUT TRASH JOURNALISM

Roy Greenslade says that "the arrest of the News of the World's royal editor, Clive Goodman, has been greeted by a media feeding frenzy...

The obtaining of information about people's telephone calls is not confined to the News of the World.

Many papers pay informants to discover phone records, the content of text messages and the recordings of voicemails.

And it is considered, within those papers, as routine stuff...

Ethics is the last thing on the mind of many tabloid journalists (and editors).

They want stories at any cost and by any means.

With the red-tops losing sales at a fast rate, there is a desperation to cling on to as many readers as possible, and it is thought that ever more intrusive revelations, no matter how trite and no matter how hurtful, are what the public wants.

To that end, reporters once paid people to trawl through dustbins.

Now they pay them to...

Anyway, if people are desperate to know what a prince said to his son why are they deserting week by week the papers that print such nonsense."

Northing to add.

Good point.