The fallout from Lord Hutton's report has spread across the entire media industry in Britain. His criticisms of the BBC were not just aimed at an individual journalist but wider editorial management standards, which were branded "defective".

Many Britons will applaud a well-deserved bite delivered to a vicious "media dog". Nor will they be thinking just about the public service broadcaster. The cruel way in which individuals are targeted by the media in general has dragged down the esteem of journalism.

British newspapers, in particular, evolved into the nastiest of their kind in the world. I was a "news dog" in the 1980s - and eventually decided to get out of the mainstream field because of concerns about the paucity of ethical standards. In 1985 I broke a story that drew a pack of "bloodhounds" from London to my rural reporting patch. I was surprised by the tricks the "hounds" of Fleet Street would play to sniff out the most trivial details. I was even more astonished when the photographer from my local paper slithered under fences, and crawled along the grass in an invasive attempt to sneak a picture with a zoom lens of someone in her home who wasn't even the subject of my story.

In subsequent years, I witnessed many remorseless acts - not just in the field but from editing staff who would change and cut copy in the most insensitive ways. The result was the persecution of individuals by the "hound" pack whose hunger for the red meat of "news" was always conducted under the banner of seeking the truth.

I found fault too with the story-selection process. In the late 1980s, as a reporter in Birmingham, I was struck by the disparity between Life in a culturally diverse city and the Media. Pakistanis, Bangladeshis and Indian Sikhs were making a huge impact - socially, culturally, commercially, politically, religiously. Yet these communities were virtually invisible - if you looked for reports in newspapers. This was unsound journalistic judgment. The US scholar Francis Fukuyama forecasts the assimilation of immigrants into Western societies will become the most critical social issue. The West needs overseas labour because of low fertility rates. But second and third generation Muslim immigrants from cities like Birmingham have fought for causes linked to Al-Qaeda or become suicide bombers targeting Israel.

The gap between Life and the Media concerns too the phony use of language. Illegal immigrants get labelled emotively as "second-class citizens slaving in sweat-shops". I got to know such people in New York and London and they were just grateful to have jobs.

Children who work in poor regions are "victims" - but how are these "victims" supposed to feed themselves?

The loudest noises about "slave labour" come from places like London where a woman is reportedly raped every day of the year by adolescent gangs. One reason the West has a high juvenile delinquency rate is that schools teem with non-academic students forced to do exams when they would be far better off learning a skill as apprentice labourers.

The "sweat shops" of the West are hidden engines helping to run the economies of Europe and North America. It's true that many illegals avoid taxes - but they aren't scroungers living off welfare payments either. When my mother ran a boutique in Manhattan in the 1960s a few of her machinists were illegals. If the media had portrayed her production floor as a "sweat shop", nothing would have been further from the truth. Workers were paid generously and my mother gave money to help staff who had desperate family members in countries like Guatemala and Bolivia. The reason she hired such people wasn't to undercut lawful workers. They were the only ones with fabric cutting and machining skills.

The Church of England should consider the advantages of such workers after figures last year showed there was no Divine Intervention to help its stock investments. The Church lost half a billion pounds. I have come across many redundant churches, which are often sold for a song. Many potential buyers worry about the cost of conversion. If the Church took on a design company, and did up a few large defunct properties, paying low wages to illegal immigrants, it could make enough from a few sales in London alone to keep it in clover for another century. Sanctimony - or survival?

Let us conclude by remembering the reason for Lord Hutton's investigation: the death of Dr David Kelly, a weapons expert and respected scientist. BBC staff and other media have been protesting angrily over the censorious language in the report. But do not forget that Dr Kelly would never have taken his life in the absence of a major public controversy. Life is sacred and journalists should respect that fact.

(HK Edition 02/02/2004 page7)