MY WIFE was just 16 when we met. "What's he do?" her mother asked. "He's a reporter." There was a moment's pause before she managed to gasp: "Oh, God."

That was a long time ago and I mention the moment simply to point out that nothing much has changed. Journalism has always had a bad press, although Earl Spencer's recent assaults have made things worse.

It's a pity that we have all been lumped together; from the eager young junior covering the local parish council meetings to the national newspaper editors and proprietors.

We aren't all thugs, although the higher you get up the ladder the more thuggish the behaviour you encounter. I know. I've spent a lot of time there. The problem is, of course, money.

If you are being paid washers and you lose your job you've simply lost a job that paid washers and so what. If you lose a very well paid job as a hack on a national then the gravy train suddenly hits the buffers. The golden goose flies no more. So you do your best to hang on. You don't "knock" stories; you stand them up, however flakey they might be. And if a tale needs a bit of "top spin" then so what. On a local level, a youngster surviving a tumble from a first floor window was always in a "30ft plunge" while on a national level the degree of "tweak" was almost invariably magnified. Occasionally unfairly. Once or twice viciously.

However, I can't help thinking that Earl Spencer was over the top when he accused the Press of killing Diana and, later, of making her "the most hunted person of the modern age."

As Lynda Lee-Potter wrote in the Daily Mail: "He conjured up a terrified Bambi-like weak figure running mindlessly until she collapsed in exhaustion." Lynda said it did less than justice to his mesmeric sister who had immense impact.

"She would have liked personal freedom as well as her power, but these rarely go hand in hand."

Journalists I know who, in turn, had more than a nodding acquaintance with Diana reckoned she was tougher than she was often painted. She called most of the shots and reporters scrambled for crumbs from her table. Yes, the paparazzi were more than a nuisance and it's time their antics were curbed.

But let's not get carried away. Earl Spencer was happy to join the journalistic rat pack he now condemns and cynics might think his recent assault owed something to the fact that in his younger days he had been painted in the Press as a Hooray Henry while the News of the World had turned him over very neatly a couple of years ago.

And if I had a vulnerable young sister who was in such a turmoil I don't think I would have been living half a world away, seeing her just once, fleetingly, in nearly six months.

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.