There's a situation going on at the moment in the UK involving some of our most famous celebrities - if you don't know who they are then you probably won't care who they are so I'm not going to name names.

This particular story has brought out all of the op-ed columnists in hives of "you can't prove a negative". And of course it's not actually true. It's very hard to prove a negative but it's not impossible. What they mean are talking about is the old feeling of "there's no smoke without fire". It's very easy to allege something, and it's hard to prove something one way or another (usually these stories only have two witnesses one who claims one thing and one who claims the other) but it doesn't matter about proof because people start to believe things a long way before proof comes along. And in fact if evidence does come along later people tend to only believe it if it supports their argument. If it doesn't the reasoning seems to go, the evidence will appear to be biased or faked.

But what if it isn't smoke surrounding this celebrity couple? What if it's actually dry ice? It looks like smoke, it feels like smoke but actually there isn't fire driving this smoke there is instead a theatrical machine.

The rules governing freedom of speech, freedom of press and personal privacy have always been tricky. But in balance a free press is more important than personal privacy. But the awesome responsibility that we, every single UK citizen who can vote and therefore collectively run the country remember, grant to the press should be respected. And so a free press should try and get it's facts right before going to print. And having the right story should be more important than having the first story.