Channel 4 News anchor Jon Snow has called for the introduction of a privacy law to curb the excesses of the tabloid press.
The veteran presenter spoke out against the ‘needless intrusion into people’s private lives’ this weekend and signalled his backing for a law to protect citizens from the actions of a number of newspapers.
He said: “I believe that the tabloid media, in particular, have so intruded into the private lives of public people that they have brought it upon themselves that there should indeed be a privacy act.”
Snow said that if a politician, who had never made any pronouncements about morality, chose to have a mistress it was not public business.
He made his views public during an interview with Conservative MP Ann Widdecombe for The Guardian newspaper.
Snow has himself been the victim of newspaper intrusion. In 2007, the Mail on Sunday was forced to apologise to him after it falsely alleged he had an affair with a woman and smoked cannabis.
The Channel 4 News man told the former Conservative government minister, this weekend, that while he supported greater regulation on privacy he was ‘totally opposed to, and would go to the gallows to prevent, censorship.’
The two were taking part in a series of interviews where leading politicians were given the opportunity to turn the tables on journalists and ask them questions.
Leading BBC political journalist Andrew Marr, being interviewed by shadow chancellor, George Osborne, dropped strong hints about a possible future as a member of parliament once his contract with the BBC had come to an end.
Asked directly by Osborne if he would go into politics, Marr said he would need a ‘party that’s going to come round to my point of view’. Osborne told Marr he could stand as an independent.
Marr replied: “I’m contracted for a few more years yet doing what I’m doing. But one day, I certainly wouldn’t rule it out.”
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