Society & Culture

Following on from the recent Kerry Katona and Max Mosley court cases I just wondered what people's views are on limits being placed upon the media.

Let's start with the Madeline McCann story. A potentially very juicy story with one problem - there was very little information avaliable. The media had a field day and the some of the reporting concerning the Gerry,Kate and Robert Murat was appalling, potentially destroying their lives. The compensation they recieved was a small fraction of the profits some publications made off the back of this.

Some of the right wing media have for a long-time earned their bread by inciting the majority against vulnerable groups with deliberately inaccurate stories. I think the Daily Mail is probably the best recruiting tool radical Islamists have avaliable to them.

I remember when the Sun were inciting hatred against Maxine Carr every single day for a few weeks, and then ran a story complaining about how much the police were spending to protect her. Unbelievable hypocrisy just to sell newspapers.

The media will stop at no lengths to sell newspapers, nothing is sacred, no level too low not even destroying lives or inciting racial violence. An then we get stories which are just not in the public interest like Max Moseley, the News of the World were just playing up to one of the worst aspects of human nature.

Okay so non of us want to see a state run media, and there are definately many examples of where the freedom of the media is invaluable - exposing corruption etc.

But is there a case for placing some kind of limit on what can and can't be published?