It may seem difficult to believe, but the media have shown some restraint in their coverage of Soham

The very name of Soham induces a strange mixture of disgust, boredom and pity. I return to it with reluctance. But we have to consider the conduct of the media, and in particular the criticisms made about the press by the Cambridgeshire coroner, David Morris, and by the Cambridgeshire police.

I’m certainly not going to defend the worst excesses of the media. The rewards offered by some newspapers are said to have encouraged hundreds of gold-digging callers to clog up police telephone lines. Some papers printed details I would very much rather not have read. The News of the World’s renewed call for ‘Sarah’s Law’, which would give parents the right to know the identity of sex offenders living in their area, seems to be a case of jumping on the wrong bandwagon at the wrong time. Then there was the nauseous sentimentality of some of the reporting, which must have encouraged the morbid day-trippers who have appalled the inhabitants of Soham.