Well Russell, I'm not going to get too far into your argument with the SST; their editorial was not very elegantly constructed. I do, however, have a serious issue with your post. Fair enough if you want to slag off Runting, feel free, but your readers do have a "reasonable expectation", to borrow that phrase, that you should do so without misrepresenting the facts.
Here's part of what you what you wrote: "Let’s just back up the truck here. Last year, Lorde wasn’t simply snapped “on the beach with her boyfriend”. The photographer followed them miles out of town to a family bach and then further to a remote beach. She was 16. And after the pictures were published in Woman’s Day magazine, they were republished internationally, in some cases in a context that any reasonable person would find offensive."
I can tell you that the pictures taken during a bach holiday were taken on a beach crowded with dozens of people. It was not remote. They were next to the bach, next to a busy picnic ground and car park. No one was followed to the bach or the beach. The pictures were taken this year, not last. Lorde was 17, not 16. Those are the straightforward factual errors. As for the "context" of publication being offensive to any reasonable person, I'd be interested to see what you mean, but the pictures themselves, I would suggest, were not offensive at all. No one at the beach seemed offended by what happened on the day and nor should they have been. So, if recording or photographing inoffensive events taking place fully in the public gaze is beyond the pale, we are all in trouble. If a photographer becomes responsible for the "context" in which his pictures are subsequently used - and again, I'm not sure whether you are referring to newspapers, magazines or random Twitter users pinching them from the web and adding their sometimes unpleasant remarks, then we are in even deeper trouble.
You, and I'm quite certain many of the angry critics on your comments pages, may well say that the errors I've pointed out don't change your views. Fine. Pap pictures offend some people for a variety of reasons and you're all entitled to say so. But I do think that if you set yourself up as an influential media commentator you have a duty to make every effort to find out the truth of the events that so horrify you. On this occasion, you failed, which I hope will trouble you as much as it does me.