UK media skewered for ‘hounding’ black academic

The UK media has long been criticised for being too intrusive, and moves have been made to curtail some of its worse excesses, while balancing the need for press freedoms.

Prince Harry – who blames the press for the death of his mother Princess Diana, killed in a Paris car chase with paparazzi – recently lost a case before a UK court alleging illegal information gathering about his personal life years ago.

Media watchdog IPSO, which operates a 24-hour emergency harassment helpline, said it was reviewing a flood “of complaints” about the coverage of Arday.

If any breaches of the Editor’s Code of Practice were found it would take “appropriate steps”, it added.

It recalled that the code contains “specific protections relating to privacy, harassment” including “cases involving personal grief and shock”.

Media law expert Mark Stephens told AFP it was “perfectly legitimate” for the media to investigate the allegations.

“The problem is that they were warned that he was suicidal and didn’t stop … (and) if anything escalated the reporting,” he said.

He added that once Arday had resigned, “What’s the public interest in continuing to berate him?”

And he maintained that media lawyers were “less and less … looking at the consequences and editorial or ethics judgements”.

UK Prime Minister Andy Burnham has called for “reflection” to determine what happened. 

But more than 111,000 people had by Wednesday signed a petition by the Good Law Project, an activist group, calling for a public inquiry to “ensure a responsible press”.

“Instead of getting better, press conduct is getting worse. And the impact of that failure is deadly,” it said.