The idea that stopping journalists rummaging through the bins of private citizens in pursuit of credit card statements on the off-chance they might have done something unusual is hardly likely to bring down the entire edifice of freedom and democracy.  Indeed, there is a clear democratic mandate for the robust protection of privacy- informed by the basic equality that underlies rule-of-law- derived from the revulsion that most people feel at the actions of certain parts of the press. As in any profession- including law, medicine and politics- practitioners are allowed discretion on the understanding that they won’t abuse it.  In this instance, the discretion leant to the political class has been routinely and systematically abused over a period of decades, to little benefit. All of the examples that Opposition has been able to cite have been the result of old-fashioned, dogged investigation and courageous writing and editorship.  If regulation gets journalists away from the addiction to celebrity, away from the easy sells of sex and venality and back into the better traditions of the trade, it may serve to revive the entire newspaper industry.