Freedom for oddballs

Something troubles me about the press coverage of the Ipswich murders. It's not just their transformation into entertainment, which is bad enough. It's the way a number of newspapers have convicted the two suspects already. As Mark Lawson argues, it's because they look the type, particularly after a bit of surfing the net. I wonder how many journalists' personal lives could get through the same level of scrutiny?


PS. If you weren't expecting to read anything new here before 2007, well I just wouldn't let it lie. I was going to cut back on blogging over Xmas, not least to catch up with other things. But like a number of bloggers, my proposed interuption has been interupted. There's no specific emergency to report on, nor any of those end of year award listings people go in for (e.g. here, here and here); one could add on an award for maximising BNP recruitment to the Guardian, where an undercover journalist became something of a London organiser for the boneheads. Nor will I be summarising Thursday's Blog Digest 2007 launch party, initiated by Justin McKeating. No "Bloggers in social skills shocker" headlines here. And I got to meet Nosemonkey by the urinals: beat that for a claim to fame.