It's a private issue...

Photograph by eye dropper

While watching Question Time last night I got into the discussion of Injunctions and Privacy and, saying as for some reason my tweets failed to load I thought I would write a post all about my view on privacy and injunctions.

Injunctions and privacy laws in Britain were originally put in place to protect trade secrets and government information not to protects overpaid men who are supposed to be role models to aspiring footballers up and down the country.

Photograph by funkypancake

It is not just footballers who are trying to hide their extra marital activity - Andrew Marr took out an injunction to hide his love affair.

If public figures don't want their affairs splashed all over the front pages then perhaps they should learn to stay committed and work out any problems in their relationship rather than running to someone else.

Photograph by Sara Simmons

Before Ryan Giggs became front page news for his activities off the pitch, Imogen Thomas was portrayed as a home wrecker. Even though she should have known better, I don't feel that she should have been identified and forced to take the majority of abuse from the media when -as they say - it takes two to tango.

Although sex sells newspapers, I don't think anyone is bothered about who is sleeping with who - I personally feel that there are more important things happening in the world than a public figure who can't stay faithful.

I feel that privacy laws and injunctions should be applied to cases of blackmail, trade secrets and government information and that the men getting gagging orders out against the women they sleep with and the secret children they may or may not have should think about the consequences of their actions instead of paying thousands to cover up their dirty little secrets.

Bloggers "inadequate, pimpled, single"

Photograph by funkypancake

I have just come from a lecture in which my lecturer contradicted himself big time.

He started by commending a person in the lecture for his work on BlogPreston, he said that he was very impressed by the site.

In the lecture we were talking about specialist journalists, those in the industry who write about one particular thing such as sport, health education or fashion and he mentioned blogs.

He said he wouldn’t trust a blogger over an established journalist as he doesn't want to read the opinions of someone who is not a trusted journalist. He practically agreed with what Andrew Marr said last month when he described bloggers as "inadequate, pimpled and single."

This contradicts almost everything I have been taught over the last year and a half!

Firstly in another module we were told to set up a blog and that blogging is an important tool in the changing world of journalism. Also I have always been told by an editor of a local newspaper that if you can't get work published somewhere publish it yourself so that is what I do in my blog.

After saying that he wouldn’t trust a blogger the lecturer gave us some tips on how to become a good specialist journalist and guess what one of his suggestions was.....

That we write a blog!!!

He either thinks blogging is a good idea or doesn't - he can’t have it both ways!

As for Andrew Marr's opinions on Blogging and citizen journalism, if it wasn't for the latter, news companies like the BBC wouldn’t have had many of the news stories such as the 7/7 bombings that they have had as quickly if it wasn’t for citizen journalists.

Also I am a blogger, I am not pimpled, I have been told that I have good skin on a few occasions, also I am not single. Finally and most importantly, I should hope that I am not inadequate as I am paying a lot of money for my journalism degree and I wouldn’t be doing so if I thought my degree would be wasted!