If the death of Gordon and Sarah Brown's baby highlighted anything, it was the hypocrisy and mawkish sentimentality that overwhelms the majority of media coverage of such events.

At issue on this occasion was, among other things, whether or not to use the photograph of the devastated Chancellor and his wife, leaving the hospital in the back of their car.

Was it intrusive, or was it the legitimate finale to a drama played out over previous days in reams of news, comment and photographs, some of it with the Browns' co-operation.

My own view is the latter and I would not have hesitated to use the photograph.

It was a prissy, though predictable, decision by both BBC and ITN not to use the picture.

This from two television outlets who never hesitate to put a weeping, distraught mother in front of a camera to beg for the return of an abducted child or pray that her televised tears will ensure no such thing ever happens again.

Afterwards the editor will congratulate his team on the 'moral rightness' of their decision to expose her agony and make the questionable claim it will benefit the police inquiry. What he is really saying is "great television, you guys."

Only the Times and Guardian decided against using the photograph on the grounds that it intruded into the Browns' private grief. However, the decision did not stop the Guardian using a long, sentimentalised 'cri de coeur' about private tragedy played out under public lights.

It talked of the drama no one should have seen and the gnawing sense of shame at being an intruder in a room where we do not belong. It was accompanied by a tasteless drawing of a couple holding hands in the glare of a heart shaped spotlight.

Coverage of this story has already been described as the increasing 'Diana-isation' of British public life.

The increasing public appetite for breast-beating and public displays of grief is being led and fuelled by the media.

How else do you explain the Daily Mirrors 'Pray for Jenny ... Weep For Her Mum And Dad'. It was the sort of claptrap we have come to expect from the paper's editor who also claimed his decision to use the photograph had been a close call!!

But there are two honourable exceptions. The first is Radio 4's 'Today' programme.

Editor Rod Liddle used only a mention of the facts and a brief interview and said afterwards: "The truth of the matter is very simple: A terrible thing happened to two good people. Now let them be."

The other is this paper (and I would point out I have no editorial input whatsoever).

The editor made the correct decision to use the picture on page 2 with a straightforward, unsentimental news report on the tragedy. A classical example of how it should have been done.