His opinion pieces are often ill-fitting these days for Guardian readers, but this is a fantastic resource for the student of media regulation: a summary, packed with further hyperlinked articles, of the press case against strengthened press regulation, and some of the counter-arguments. What he also does here is unpick the extremely anti-democratic nature of billionaire owners who don't even pay UK tax seeking to shape public opinion through 'their' newspapers. I highly recommend reading
the full article.
A free press is all very well, but free for whom?
The press lords are lashing out against external regulation, but they ignore several obvious problems
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Lord Justice Leveson,
who is poised to issue his report on regulatory reform of the press.
Photograph: Peter Macdiarmid/Getty Images
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In today's moment of election excitement from the United States,
words like freedom and liberty get thrown around like confetti at a
wedding, often by people who seem to think it only applies to those like
themselves. The Daily Mail's Richard Littlejohn is furious that the Obama victory was achieved by "fear and loathing", not tactics he would ever use himself.
But away from wall-to-wall election coverage, the Daily Telegraph's "Keep the press free" editorial – it appeared on Tuesday – illustrates the narrow view of liberty too.
What
was it about? Lord Justice Leveson is poised to issue his report on
regulatory reform of the press in the wake of the disturbing disclosures
arising from the phone-hacking affair which led to the closure by
Rupert Murdoch – an action cynical and disturbing in itself — of the
News of the World in a doomed attempt to save the Dirty Digger's bid for
BSkyB.
What provoked the Telegraph's disdain were statements made by the National Union of Journalists in defence of a statutory underpinning – here's a recent exposition
of the union's case – for whatever revised form of press regulation
emerges from the haggling which will follow Leveson's report, due out
later this month. Speaking only for a few working journalists, the NUJ
threatens "to sacrifice hard-won freedoms on the altar of leftwing
orthodoxy", so the Telegraph assures its readers before urging the
union's members to stop sending in their subs.
Well, I stoutly
defend the Telegraph's right to write rubbish. But this is poor stuff
and would be even if it did not flow from a union-bashing newspaper
(does it recognise the NUJ for negotiating purposes? I think not) owned
by a pair of elderly property moguls, not locally resident for tax
purposes, who have laid waste to the paper's formerly sturdy character.
