Editors protest too much about privacy

Editors are in such a bate about judicial restrictions preventing them from doing as they like that they are using every excuse to raise the topic. Example: the arrest of International Monetary Fund chief Dominique Strauss-Kahn on an attempted rape charge. We are asked to believe that French privacy laws have concealed the truth (alleged truth, by the way) of DSK's philandering. Meanwhile, as they hurl brickbats at judges and politicians day after day, they have failed to mention that they already voluntarily collaborate in restricting the freedom they say they require through the Press Complaints Commission ( read what its director said ). That's why I argue in my London Evening Standard column today that editors are protesting too much about threat of a privacy law.