Stars also deserve protection from this
7:10pm Friday 2nd December 2011 in Colin Baker
IWROTE here a few months ago about the time I was conned by the News of the World, as a naïve young actor, so I won’t go over the details of that now happily defunct publication’s duplicity.
But the revelations by a succession of high profile people at the Leveson Enquiry have highlighted the heartless and unpleasant tactics employed by certain elements of the national press in pursuit of what is often at best scurrilous titillation for those millions who seem to want to read that stuff and at worst vile fabrication.
To characterise the current debate as being about muzzling a free press misses the point hugely. Many of those who have been giving evidence and who might be considered justified in so wishing have made the point that true investigative journalism is and must remain inviolate in a free society. A state-muzzled press would be appalling.
But what happened to the McCanns and the Dowlers in particular must never happen again; and to ensure that it never happens again, I believe we have to acknowledge that self-regulation by the press has simply not worked. I mention the McCanns and Dowlers first because they were people who were in a place that none of us can imagine or would ever want to experience and they were then subjected to the most callous and inhumane treatment by an out-of-control element in the ‘comic book’ end of the print media.
But star actors and sportsman who have also suffered deserve some protection too. The notion that because you do a high profile job you automatically crave publicity is for the majority completely untrue. Very often they are contractually obliged to do interviews and appearances and would much more happily just do their job and go home.
Even at my low level of ‘fame’ I often have to explain this to people who want me to do something and add – as if it were an enticement – ‘It will be good publicity for you.’ They seem to think we wouldn’t help them unless there was something in it for us – and this incorrect assumption that we are looking for a quid pro quo is actually quite offensive sometimes.
If there is anything to be learned, it is not to believe everything you read in certain nationals and to reflect how you’d feel if it were you they were pursuing so voraciously.
