Another important point made by Sienna Miller was the difference between being chased down the street by ten men and being chased down the street by ten men with cameras. There isn't a difference and in either case it shouldn't be difficult to decide if distress was caused.

There was also an interesting point made by Daniel Hannan (spit) on tonight's QT. If a newspaper is found guilty of printin untrue stories, then punitive damages should be awarded against the editor personally, as well as the newspaper proprietors

Oh, there ate so many reasons I like that idea.

tbf, libel law allows the author, publisher, distributor and anyone with editorial supervision, from sub to editor, to be joined to the action and sued. But in 99.9% of cases, the paper will pay any damages awarded against an employee.

Of course, with libel the issue isn't so much whether a story is untrue, but whether it's damaging …

Perhaps a newspaper should be required to devote equal amount of column space on the same page for false stories i.e. like an apology to the reader for deliberately misleading them. Each reference should detail where the newspaper got it wrong.

Here's the problem. In terms of what Sienna Miller is complaining about, the people who are doing the chasing will be paps, independents, not in the main (if at all) newspaper employees.

So no new law whatsoever passed against newspapers would even slightly help.

I would agree that 10 men chasing a young lass down the street already falls within the criminal law, and could be dealt with accordingly, but how? She is in a similar situation to the rest of us, which is getting the police to turn out in less than half a day for anything that is less than life and death.

that isn't, especially, a criticism of the police, although I have plenty, but they do have scarce resources and a call like "Hi, I'm Sienna Miller, there's some photographers chasing me and I am upset" isn't going to obtain an emergency police response. Why? Because she is in no danger whatsoever. Nothing will happen to her. It is very unpleasant for her, and certainly shouldn't happen, but it is in a (very) long list of things which the law finds difficult or impossible to deal with. And I don't see any easy answer at all, beyond paying for private personal protection, which she shouldn't have to do, but realistically no law is ever going to stop this.

Not employees, but possibly commissioned. And even if they're doing it on spec, they're relying on newspapers (and magazines) to buy the pics.

See above. Remove the market for their pics, remove their behaviour.

Unless they chase her into a Paris motorway tunnel...

Perhaps we could decriminalise the offence of "I'll shove that camera up your arse"?

Come off it, your typical swarm of paps are out for the money shot. nobody commissions them, they only get paid by results meaning pictures viewed as worth buying by the media. But if say one oao was commissioned - how on earth would Sienna Miller, or anyone, ever know? The difficulty I am explaining is that practically there is no way to apprehend and identify the photographers.


Well, yes, banning the entire press from ever publishing photographs of anything would indeed work.


No, she isn't likely to run into concrete columns, wherever they chase her.

1. Walk away briskly with photographers following.
2. Check in shop window that they are very close.
3. Stop suddenly.
4. Sue for damages to back of head caused by ridiculously large camera lens.

5. Can be enhanced if carrying an umbrella pointing backwards.
6. Can be enhanced if camera operators are peering constantly through lens and you can choose a route that passes by an open manhole cover (admit I blagged this one from the Beano)