Mal Fletcher comments

Even more importantly, though, the phone hacking scandal raises questions about the relationship between newslite - the type of news normally associated with celebrity culture - and what used to be called 'hard news'.

The so-called red-top papers, of which News of the World was Britain's best-seller, have fed on celebrity gossip for decades. Their stock in trade has been the publication of exposes alleging bad behaviour among celebrities and other public figures.

Some of their sales success might be attributed to a strong desire among their readers to hold highly-paid public figures to account. More likely, though, it is down to a rapacious appetite for gossip.

Though it did from time to time introduce stories with important implications for the public interest, News of the World was probably always less about real news than entertainment.

But in this age of celebrity obsession, multi-media news platforms and competition with social media, is news generally moving in that same direction?

Heads of news organisations will huff and puff about their role as public educators, but are news organisations gradually becoming more purveyors of popular entertainment than hard news?

Media producers are already under great pressure to fill 24/7 news schedules, both online and on TV and radio. The press are affected, too, particularly as more and more publishers release parallel editions for iPad and other tablet platforms, so that written news is presented alongside movies and music.

Video and music always change the presentation of news. The mere presence of a camera can turn reportage into a show-biz product, if it is not used with care.

Reporting on hard news isn't made any easier by the growing public appetite for 'direct news' via Twitter and Facebook, either.

Yes, these platforms are useful in situations where there are no journalists on hand to report developments - as in the Arab spring uprisings. But it's very difficult to present a nuanced news story in sound-bytes of less than 120 characters on Twitter.

Besides, a recent American study found that whilst 39% of young people get their news from social media, more than 90% of that news features material provided by professional journalists working for old-school news outlets.

It seems inevitable that as social news media grow in their influence, some aspects of celebrity-focused tabloid-style journalism will become more the norm than the exception in news rooms.

If our view of what constitutes news shifts too far in the direction of newslite, we may find that using data-mining and other under-the-radar methods become normal practice in even the more scrupulous organisations.

We the public seem to have an unwritten contract with newspapers and the electronic media. We may tolerate certain levels of intrusiveness when it comes to news about people who make their living by courting publicity.