Hugh Grant

What I’m fighting for

Better newspaper regulation isn’t just a cause for lefties and celebrities. Here’s why

I’m often asked why I keep banging on about the press. Am I a lefty? I’m not. I’m not a righty either. I drift. (And in terms of impartiality, by the way, the same goes for Hacked Off – as a campaign group we are determinedly hermaphrodite.)

Am I a muzzler? I really don’t think so. I recoil from the dead hand of the state. I grind my teeth when they swipe my passport at UK immigration.

Do I want to be a moral arbiter? Hardly. Rupert Murdoch recently called me a scumbag. Harsh, but I see where he’s coming from.

So am I a whingeing celeb?

No, in that it really isn’t all about getting caught with my trousers down in 1995. That was a matter of public record, so how could it not be reported? I won’t pretend the press storm was fun, but it was inevitable. And I accept that in my job you often get more attention that you might like.

No also in the sense that this isn’t about trying to get better coverage for myself. If that were my aim, would I really be going toe to toe with British tabloids? They will never forgive me, whatever the outcome.

And no in that it certainly isn’t a craving for attention. I trudge on to Newsnight or Question Time like Saddam to the scaffold. We beg them to use our professors or our lawyers, but they won’t.

But yes, in one sense it is personal. Anyone who finds their phone has been hacked or their flat broken into on the orders of a newspaper; or has had their elderly father with a heart condition repeatedly brought down three flights of stairs to talk to door-stepping reporters, despite polite requests to leave him alone; or has witnessed the children of their (non-showbiz) girlfriend crying with fear in the back of her car as she is chased by photographers; or has seen the press print intimate details from the medical records of the mother of their child without her permission — any normal person in these situations would be angry.

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