It’s a tough life being a journalist – living life in the search, in the hope, of being in the right place, at the right time to get ‘a scoop’. No wonder then that some journalists, and their editors, seem to have resorted to creating sensational stories for themselves to report:
According to an investigation by a Bulgarian newspaper, three men have been trawling the Black Sea coast, looking for a prostitute willing to fly with them to the UK on the first flight to London after Bulgaria joins the EU.
What’s more, the men were allegedly trying to find someone capable of making a convincing forgery of a British passport.
And who were the men behind this shocking plan, worthy of a sensational expose by the British press? Er, they were the British press, locals claim.
British Courts accept ‘entrapment’ as a defence. It is a shame that the press do not hold themselves to the same high standard. It is not significant to show that somewhere in Bulgaria there is a prostitute who is prepared to come to Britain in return for media coverage, and who knows what by way of expenses. That would prove precisely nothing, one way or the other, about the dangers of immigration, but (if all of the accusations in that blog post are true) much has been said about the standards of journalism, little of it flattering.