Part of the emerging narrative about journalism appears to criticise all newspapers for recklessly (or ‘illegally’) blagging people’s personal details without justification for doing so. If this is accurate, the public would be right to believe that every journalist who ‘blags’ information (or pays someone to do it for them) is as bad as the rest.
This appears to be the mood amongst many on Twitter, as well as some people with (perhaps) an interest in restricting the press.
Witness this tweet from the blogger Guido Fawkes – which implies the Guardian Media Group (which publishes The Guardian and The Observer) has broken the law as well as its ethical code.