Your Privacy is my Business

A celebrity couple - I refuse to name them - are notoriously going through a "spot of marital difficulty" at present, and some rather nasty material is being written about it in the media. This was the background to a discussion on BBC Radio 4's "Any Questions" last weekend. A "media person" who I gather from the BBC website was Anne McElvoy, Executive Editor of London's "The Evening Standard", defended the invasion of privacy involved on the basis that the material had not been invented by the media but had, she asserted as matter of fact, been provided to the media by the parties. So, that's all right, then ? Well, not for me. Some questions arise:

• Do journalists write their own stuff any more ?
• Do journalists never invent ?
• Is the Common Good unaffected if warring parents "wash their dirty linen in public" ?
• How about the good of affected parties such as e.g. their children ?

I congratulate the Government, however impure its motivation, on proposing legislation in this area.