JK Rowling tells UK phone-hacking hearing: Children 'deserve privacy'

everlastinglove_MJeverlastinglove_MJ Posts: 2,884
edited January 1970 in News
[size=12pt]JK Rowling tells UK phone-hacking hearing: Children 'deserve privacy' [/size] <br /><br />'It's very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter's school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists,' author says <br /><br />msnbc.com staff and news service reports <br /><br />updated 11/24/2011 11:12:47 AM ET  <br /><br /><br />LONDON — Author J.K. Rowling told the U.K. phone-hacking hearing that she felt under siege from intrusive journalists who staked out her house and went as far as to slip a letter into her 5-year-old daughter's school bag. <br /><br />. <br />The creator of boy wizard Harry Potter said Thursday that children "deserve privacy," The Guardian newspaper reported in its live blog of events.<br /> <br />Rowling said media interest began shortly after the publication of her first novel in 1997, and soon escalated, with photographers and reporters frequently stationed outside her home. <br /><br />Once, her daughter came home from primary school and Rowling found a letter from a journalist in her backpack. Rowling said she felt a huge sense of invasion at the move. <br /><br />"In the first burst of publicity surrounding [Harry Potter]. I unzipped her school bag in the evening, among the debris I found an envelope addressed to me from a journalist," she said, according to The Guardian's report.<br /> <br />"It's my recollection that the journalist said he intended to ask a mother at the school to put this my daughter's bag. I know no more than that, I don't know if that is how the journalist [put it in the bag]," she added.<br /> <br />'Angry' <br />"I felt such a sense of invasion that my daughter's bag ...  it's very difficult to say how angry I felt that my five-year-old daughter's school was no longer a place of complete security from journalists," Rowling said.<br /> <br />She also told how she had chased a photographer a week after she had given birth, The Guardian reported.<br /> <br />Rowling  said she had been "besieged for a week" in her house, but had thought the photographers had left. She went outside with her daughter, but then saw a paparazzi photographer with a long lens.<br /> <br />"How I thought I was going to outrun a 20-something paparazzi ... my daughter was saying 'Calm down, mum, calm down, it doesn't matter,' but it mattered enormously to me," Rowling said, according to The Guardian's reported. <br /><br />"The cumulative effect [of the media attention] becomes quite draining," she added.<br /> <br />Rowling said she thought children should not be targeted by the media.<br /> <br />"They deserve privacy. They have no choice who their parents are how their parents behave.... Where children are concerned the issue is fairly black and white," she said.<br /> <br />She also told about how two journalists from a Scottish tabloid, who were outside her house, had told her they were there because it was a "boring day at the office." <br /><br />"My family and I were literally under surveillance for their amusement," she said. "There's a twist in the stomach as you wonder what do they want, what have they got? It feels incredibly threatening to have people watching you."<br /> <br />The inquiry into media ethics and practices is being held following the phone-hacking scandal in the U.K. <br /><br />http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45427605/ns/world_news-europe/t/jk-rowling-tells-uk-phone-hacking-hearing-children-deserve-privacy/<br /><br />Not only J.K. Rowling is testifying in phone hacking hearing, also Hugh Grant and Sienna Miller. Unethical 'journalistic' practices such as intrusive and threatening paparazzi are being exposed and brought in the spotlights now. It's about time! <br /><br />L.O.V.E.<br />

Comments

  • AdiAdi Posts: 1,834
    Oh God.....I have been reading alot about this enquiry the past week. The testimonies from JK, Madeline McCann's parents, Sienna Miller, the parents of Milly Dowler. All of it is just so appalling.<br /><br />I can't even begin to imagine how they all felt/feel and there is no way I can even begin imagine how Michael felt having to deal with such intrusions from the tabloid media and paparazzi all his life.<br /><br />I hope these a*seholes get what they deserve.
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