The Leveson Inquiry has once again brought the spotlight onto the world of Journalism. However, the fantasic journalism shouldn’t be tainted with one bad group of nasty journalists. There are still really good journalists out there that need to be backed. 
We all love a good story and that is what sells papers. I am personally proud to work in the media and am proud of our free press – it could be worse we could have boring newspapers that are censored by our governments and mean nothing. Some of the best stories come from the journalists when they run campaigns to challenge the status quo.
This inquiry has come at a bad time really as the newspaper industry is in real trouble let’s not hide from that fact – digital media and generating money from digital media has been the big challenge for them and with more and more people buying tablets and smartphones and getting their news on the move it isn’t going to get any better for them.
However, that said what has happened to some celebrities and victims of murder is just plain filth and it is this type of journalism that should be stamped out. People should be placed in prison for this type of invasion of privacy. When JK Rowling talked about her five year old daughter being targeted by journalists that made me feel slightly ill. I could relate to it as I have a four year old and if I had my little boy approached like that I think I would consider taking drastic action. We wouldn’t accept behaviour like this in normal society but because they are the Paparazzi or journalists they seem to get away with it. Well I think the time is now to stamp this type of journalism out. Yes we want the whistle blowers the political journalists to challenge our Government but we don’t want ordinary people being violated. This is where the legislation needs to focus.
The craving for a new story should never go this far. The clip of JK Rowling at the Inquiry is below. I think the people that have given evidence in this inquiry should be thanked for trying to rid the UK of this nasty, crappy bilge which pretends to be real journalism.
Chris Norton is the founder of Prohibition and an award winning communications consultant with more than twenty years’ experience. He was a lecturer at Leeds Beckett University and has had a varied PR career having worked both in-house and in a number of large consultancies. He is an Integrated PR and social media blogger and writes on a wide variety of blogs across a huge amount of topics from digital marketing, social media marketing right through to technology and crisis management.
