Breakfast seminar this morning for my Wolfson Press Fellows given by Bob Satchwell (centre right), Director of the Society of Editors.

We had a lively discussion about, among other things, super-injunctions, during which Bob reminded me of something that the eminent judge Lord Woolf once said (I think in a House of Lords debate). The context was an assertion (by me) that there was no ‘public interest’ defence for tabloid coverage of the sex lives of footballers, but Woolf said that there was also a wider public interest in having newspapers that were commercially successful. Given that the public apparently craves news of footballers’ sex lives, and that tabloids pander to that craving, perhaps the public interest issue is more complex than I had thought.

Discuss, as they say in philosophy exams.