Sarah Sands: Pursue fame, Sienna, and the paps will pursue you

Sienna Miller has gone to court seeking damages for a "campaign of harassment" by photographers. She has been chased while walking her dogs, jostled and shouted at, and trapped in car chases. Beautiful, troubled blondes caught in the car lights of pursuing photographers make us uneasy. Diana, Princess of Wales, offers an eternal rebuke from the grave.

Miller is following the example of Kate Middleton by complaining about harassment as well as privacy. But while privacy is a difficult concept to grasp in an age of Facebook and citizen journalism, harassment sounds like physical bullying. Who would you back? A lovely young woman close to tears or a self-satisfied, self-publicising fat slob of a photographer called Darryn Lyons?

So why do I hope that the adorable Miller will lose this case and that the Aussie pap with the pink hair will win? Miller is appealing to law that was designed to prevent stalkers. Lyons may be repulsive but he is not Barry George. His interest is professional rather than obsessional. Creeping legislation that undermines civil rights is characteristic of our times. If celebrities and public figures want to be protected from the press, they should claim a right to privacy and let us argue it out.

The trouble with privacy is that it depends who is getting it. Our response is emotional rather than legal. I would rather pretty young blondes were left alone. I dislike the argument from hairy-arsed news executives that Sienna has forfeited her right to a private life by becoming an actress. Righteousness does not suit the press.

But I don't mind seeing Jonathan Ross photographed in his absurd Mr Toad apparel. A middle-aged man who has earned a great deal on the back of celebrity culture should not squeal about photographers following him down the street. Generally, those who lead quiet and blameless lives come and go with impunity. I have never seen Richard Briers chased down the street. Paul Newman effortlessly managed colossal fame.

It is rather easier to have sympathy for those who become public property because something terrible happened to them. The hounding of Kate McCann was not so much harassment as institutional sadism – it was grotesque to try to justify all those pictures on the basis she had sought publicity for her missing daughter. I would prefer the relationship between the media and celebrity to be one of dormant, mutual distrust. At the moment, it veers from nauseating cosiness to periodic brutality. The trend towards journalists becoming celebrities has further dirtied the waters.

An 18th-century understanding that we journalists are fleas in public life – a permanent but natural annoyance – is the only workable arrangement. We try our luck and should not mind when we are swatted for our insolence. My journalistic mentor, Peter McKay, was banned by his wife from Sunday lunches with famous neighbours because he could not guarantee that he would not write up the proceedings in his column. He understood and accepted this penalty rather than promising to reform.

In all the disapproval of George Osborne's role in Yachtgate, I am surprised no newspapers defended his journalistic instincts. He may have broken the rules of the billionaires' club, but he is clearly an honorary member of the journalistic fraternity. He gabbed and took the consequences.

We have no right to invade people's privacy, but we do have a time honoured journalistic tradition of doing so that I would hate to see disappear.

Sarah Sands is editor in chief of British 'Reader's Digest'

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