Press and responsibility

I don’t know where we are on the second part of the Leveson Inquiry – is it going ahead or not? My impression was that – after all the shenanigans, hoo-haa, ridicule and celebrity interventions that had attached themselves to the first part – even Lord Justice Leveson had gone a tad cold on the prospect of returning to the fray for a second helping.

It seems to me that that if you’re going to have ‘Freedom of the Press’ at all – which I think we can all agree to one degree or another is a good thing – then you have to accept you’re also going to be prey to some of its excesses.

It’s rather like my immediate boss at work – at a time when our department was about to be taken over my another and the two of us were been interviewed jointly to see if we were to have a role in the enlarged department (or not)  – cheerily remarking to the head of our new prospective department “The thing is, Richard, I have my good points and my bad points … and when you hire me you get both!” [To this day I still feel a shudder down my spine every time I remind myself of the comment].

I like to think of myself as an anti-establishment liberal who would go to the stake in defence of the press and particularly the art of serious investigative journalism. Dredging this back from my memory bank, was it not a leader in The Times in 1851 that stated “News is something which somebody somewhere does not wish to see in print …”?

Nevertheless, there are certain times when I come across articles in the media which are plainly irresponsible, help nobody, do not advance the cause of civilisation and are frankly scurrilous blatherings which ought to be discouraged – that is, if they cannot be prevented reaching the light of day in the first place.

One of the few things I find attractive and comforting about passing the age of sixty (or even sixty-five) is the likelihood that, at my time of life, I shall at last free from the prospect of being attacked, hunted down, sexually abused or otherwise taken advantage of by ever-growing hordes of cougar-age and beyond females. Some of them, hormones scales all over the place as the result of the menopause and possibly high on HRT, find themselves forced by pressure from the outpourings of female journalists and others to believe that they should be having ever-more daily rampant and fulfilling sex.

Around where I live, I have to be very careful about when I go out to collect my newspapers in the morning and then at lunchtime nip down the high street for a pie and a pint before popping into Coral’s to place my bet on the 3.45pm at Uttoxeter in case I am ambushed by granny-gangs and kidnapped back to one of their near-by bed-sits so that they can have their way with me.

I feel I can detect a slight note of scepticism in one or two of my readers’ thoughts – effectively asking me what the hell I am talking about.

This sort of thing – that’s what! – see here, in the – DAILY MAIL