The Spectator’s Notes | 3 March 2012

Although I like and admire Trevor Kavanagh of the Sun, I feel that his article about the wickedness of arresting journalists at dawn, published two weeks ago, marked that moment which always comes during a scandal when the trade under attack fails to ‘get it’. The same happened with those MPs who protested at the exposure of their expenses, or with Bob Diamond of Barclays telling a Commons committee that ‘the time for remorse is over’. We in the media are just as powerful in our way as are MPs or bankers in theirs, and just as abusive of our power. We, collectively, have created a climate in which everyone wants to put down the mighty from their seats. We are the mighty too. How are the mighty fallen before the evidence of the Leveson inquiry. We must take the current humiliation. Similar thoughts apply even to the death of Marie Colvin, the war reporter.