Tabloids' bigger crime to foster fear

Crime is falling. It has been steadily falling for all the time we can get information about it (going back to the Middle Ages in Europe). The only exception was a period between the 1960s and 1980s when the very numerous baby boomers were mostly aged between 18 and 30 – the largest crime-committing cohort.

In the developed world, we now live in the safest time in human history.

In a way, the exaggerated coverage of crime and terrorism without sensible information about the real risks to dispel unnecessary fear is perhaps a greater sin than hacking a few phones, and all media are to a degree guilty of it. Each individual story may be accurate, but the overall impression is grossly and dangerously misleading.

Lastly, the News of the World's hacking of celebrities will unfortunately lead to clampdowns on media which might hamper valuable investigative journalism, where, for example, one might be justified in hacking the phone of the executive of a chemical plant that was tipping toxic sludge deadly cyanide into a nearby river or lake or trespass at an abattoir to expose cruel practice.

The upshot of the News of the World scandal will be a greater public belief that journalists are prying, snooping, phone-hacking, law-breakers who will stop at nothing to sell a newspaper.

Politicians and big business will do whatever they can to reinforce that view so that any exposure of their failings by journalists can then be dismissed as muck-raking and of no matter to the public.

Meanwhile, the real risks in society go ignored.