When reading choices have an impact on the life of someone that one is reading voyeuristically about ...

Would you, for instance, think that those who read terrorist manuals or materials designed to encourage terrorist acts have no responsibility for what their reading choices are or the impact that the publication of those might have?

Different strokes, etc.

Personally, I have no comprehension of why anyone wants to spend money buying any of the trashy gossip rags that have grown up like weeds in recent years.

Why do people want to read the details of other's lives – whether those who do not parade their private lives or those like Katie Price who do?

Why? Someone explain it to me: why do you care? What right do you have to poke your nose into their lives? What do you get out of reading this trash that improves your life and how?

You talk of "treatment". What was different about the "treatment of the Dowlers that you say (rightly) was inexcusable and the treatment of the Watsons or the treatment of Mosley? Or yes, of Grant?

If the treatment was "inexcusable" in one case, why not in others?

I hardly think Al Qaeda are worried about circulation figures, at least no more than Nuts magazine are encouraging jihad.

A poor choice of comparison.

I'll say it again - the readership of NoTW, or its kind, should not be held responsible for the actions its owners and managers took (or turned a blind eye to) in order to obtain stories, particularly given that they weren't aware of the methods that were being used at the time to gather information.

You may as well criticize the Fritzls neighbours for not reporting to Social Services that two old folks were going through a wheelbarrow of food between them every week.

Rumours that James Murdoch has resigned.....

Edit - turns out it's just as director of the companies that publish The Times, The Sunday Times, and The Sun

Very good point ... defining precisely what is in the public interest is tricky.
We all "know" but would have difficulty defining it.

Nonetheless, we have had statutes before (About whistle-blowing) where the reasonable-ness of the person's belief in it being in the public interest was a key factor.

Comedy is subjective, I am not a great fan of his, but for the papers to tap his phone to get hold of 'tittle tattle' is simply wrong.

A poor choice of comparison, one might say, Andy.

I would add that the drugs comparison doesn't really work either (or at least not fully). Although it's fairly simplistic a view of a more complex case, most of those who grow or sell drugs do so in the knowledge of what they're doing and, for whatever reason, having presumably reached a conclusion that they will do that.

So that puts the consumer in a rather different relationship to the producer than it does where someone's private life is invaded, without their permission, and then sold for the entertainment of others. That is not to say that there is no ethical complexity to the relationship between drug producer, seller and consumer, but it is clearly not the same.

is he not invited to your next fancy dress party

Why would anyone want to tap their phones

I think its hilarious the way the way the print media are howling in indignation about whether Grant and Coogan's allegations are 100% accurate. Talk about giving it out but not being able to take it.

Its undoubtedly the case that some celebs ask for what they get. And Hugh Grant is never going to attract much sympathy. But it does seems to me that the tabloids treatment of celebs ultimately created the climate where they felt they could get away with their appalling treatment of the Dowlers and Chris Jeffries. If the good guys are to be protected from the worst excesses of the media, those protections are going to have to be extended to everyone, including the celebs. And it should be possible to introduce reforms without curtailing the ability of the press to undertake genuine investigative journalism.

alternatively, he rl"could be forgiven for his entire career"rl

Aye, the Hugh Grant comments were fantastic. Most of his films are trite but I was in admiration at his attempt to scandalise the [iDaily Mail[/i who have probably peddled more lies than Hitler over the past 100 years or so. Hopefully some of Grant's words will stick although I'm not hoping for that much given their reader's inability to think.

Good article rlhere from the Guardian's Peter Bradshaw on Grant's contribution to the debaterl.

How true as I almost have lol.