Quote Originally Posted by Gandalf View Post
I'm not really sure what is being asked, but the whole process seems convoluted and I don't see why. Phone hacking is a criminal act and stalking a person is immoral and I think the press needs to be accountable for these two things. Anyone caught for doing these things needs to be put in prison when you see people being put away then the message gets hammered home.

I just don't understand the need to stalk celebrities 24/7. They are not that interesting. If I did that I would be given a restraining order, but the press get a free pass. If I was famous there would be a lot of broken cameras. Not cool.
You are right that accountability is not something that can be avoided by declaring some random public interest cause when a media organisation is harassing the bereaved families of dead innocents. Self regulation is a joke in which an increasingly seedy and frivolous tabloid culture is seeking to ignore any code of dignity and carries on as it likes safe in the knowledge that it's own editors are running the press complaints commission. It has to change but Politicians are so deeply inserted into media barons cosy crevices that I fear they will pontificate and bring up a silly muzzling argument to protect the bastards that violate the rights of dead murder victims. I am not so much posing a question as trying to stimulate a discussion in an interesting ethical debate that is happening right now.