Andy Gilder wrote:Prior to this story breaking, what ethical grounds did NoTW readers have to make them reconsider their purchase?
The invasion of someone else's private life for their amusement.
Andy Gilder wrote:The "fake Sheikh" stuff one could argue was primarily public interest - corruption in sport, people using their positions to sell access to others etc. Sure there were also plenty of kiss and tell stories, but no reason to suspect that these were being offered up on anything other than a voluntary basis by those seeking to profit from them...
I also remember 'ordinary' people having their stories splashed across the pages of the rags. And then stories like Mosley's, for which there was no public interest justification.
Are you really suggesting that, because stories in the public interest have been published, the titillation and the invasions of privacy (which, I suggest, far outweigh the former) is acceptable – or even that you cannot have one without the other?
Andy Gilder wrote:Outside of those in the trade, could any of the purchasers of NoTW have had even the vaguest inkling of the subterfuge being undertaken by its employees and consultants?
Forget that. There is the invasion of someone else's private life for the amusement of the buyer – irrespective of the means used to gather the information. If you want to be slightly more philosophically complex, there's the commoditisation of private life. Are you suggesting that all
NOTW readers were too thick to consider such things?
This morning was good again – a 21-year-old woman chased down streets at night by a pack of 10 men with cameras. Legal. And nice.