For the third day in a row the sordid details of Michael Laws' relationship is splashed across the news. Its in every newspaper, and on every TV channel. And it shouldn't be. To put it bluntly, in small words so that even the tiny brains of media executives can understand, it is none of our business who Michael Laws fucks. Everyone involved is a consenting adult, and so his private life should be treated as exactly that: private.
The fact that Laws issued a media statement on the matter doesn't change that. That justifies reporting the initial statement (because he has obviously consented to it, though even then I'd question whether its newsworthy except as evidence of "Laws mad, egotistical"), but it doesn't justify the subsequent digging into and reporting of every sordid detail. Its no more of public interest than the private lives of newspaper editors and political journalists are.
Bluntly, if I wanted to read this crap, I'd buy the Women's Weekly or New Idea. Its a "story" worthy of them. Its not a story worthy of anywhere that considers itself to be a serious news organisation. And that fact that it is being published by institutions which do simply shows how far our media has sunk.
