You may also want to add the names of Murdoch, Dacre, Coulson, Brooks, etc. to your list - without whose disregard of humanity, decency and true journalistic values none of this would have happened.
What rot. This is just a shallow excuse being used to do something beyond the pale. Don't like the gutter press? Don't buy it - nobody's forcing you to, after all. But when you go looking for something that critiques the government of the day and there is nothing, NOTHING, except page after page of bureaucratic, boot-licking hagiography, don't come crying to we who tried to warn you.
You seem to be implying that the politicians were itching to impose regulation all along, and took the first "shallow excuse" available. The recent history of relations between press and politicians in this country suggests otherwise to me. They set up Leveson only when public outrage at press excesses became even more frightening to them than the disfavour of the media oligarchs. The press had a cushy little number going, they got arrogant, they blew it: they can't pretend they have no responsibility for this mess.
I beg to differ with you. The Australian government has certainly been waiting for this excuse the whole time: they even imported it, lock, stock and barrel, from the UK - along with, I might add, a former UK Labor political advisor, who sits at the Australian Prime Minister's proverbial right hand.
There is no reason, justification or excuse for the Leveson inquiry. If the public is that outraged, it just has to stop buying the trash. The proprietors will take their signal from that, as they have since time immemorial.
Well, we're clearly not going to agree. I can't speak about the Australian situation, and our view of what happened here in the UK is obviously very different
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Then you pass laws prohibiting the ability of gutter journalists to use tools which even the police would need a warrant to obtain, you reframe laws against slander and libel after appropriate public consultation and a referendum on those laws, and you punish individual journalists severely when they overstep the mark.
But with the exception of suppressing details of impending military operations and related matters*, you do not ever, ever, ever, EVER attempt government control of the content of the press in a parliamentary democracy. Ever.
* = including but not limited to performance characteristics of frontline equipment
In fact, balls. Worse than balls: a load of mandelson. I don't wish to be as emphatic as our friendly Commonwealth medico, but, No. Every problem you cite was already addressed by statute law and the CPS have acted. To overturn 300 years of press freedom in this manner, with a stitch-up like this? No, that was pretextual. The fact that a few people abuse an absolute right never excuses, justifies, or palliates an attempt to take that right from the people. Never. Never. Never. And - I don't wish to sound like Professor Morgenbesser, who was arrested by a New York copper when he asked him, 'Who do you think you are? Kant?' (PC O'Plod being unfamiliar with that philosopher and mistaking the name for another word)- but, if you really take the contrary position to that I have just stated, pray tell me which of your rights you care to have sacrificed or impaired by those whose power and livelihood depend on its not being too much exercised, all on the excuse that it has been or might be abused by others
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Re: No, actually.steepholmMarch 19 2013, 17:22:41 UTC
My dear Wemyss, why are you talking as if I were an admirer of the current proposals? All I have argued is that we would not have arrived at this point if the press had managed to keep its collective wanger in its pants. Is that really controversial?
If it were a question of just "a few bad apples" (as was so long maintained), they might have weathered the storm. In fact, it's become apparent that from the outright criminality of phone hacking to the louche croneyism of the Sodding Chipbutty set, to the systematic way in which papers regularly choose to "monster" (I believe is the word) certain harmless groups and individuals, and the toothlessness of the PCC in redressing such injuries, the press has been a classic example of power without responsibility and the effects of same. I believe that if they want to fight back, which they cannot effectively do without the public's goodwill, they must own that fact.
I concur that some Fleet Streeters - not a majority, but more than a few bad apples - gave the troughers in Westminster a handle and a pretext. I concur in your estimate of the PCC (as, I may add, does everyone at the Telegraph and a good few at the Indy, who agree that things wanted changing). The fact remains that no abuses, however grave or however widespread, justify or palliate what is happening, and that is the point I really must make as loudly as possible.
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There is no reason, justification or excuse for the Leveson inquiry. If the public is that outraged, it just has to stop buying the trash. The proprietors will take their signal from that, as they have since time immemorial.
Reply
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But with the exception of suppressing details of impending military operations and related matters*, you do not ever, ever, ever, EVER attempt government control of the content of the press in a parliamentary democracy. Ever.
* = including but not limited to performance characteristics of frontline equipment
Reply
Reply
If it were a question of just "a few bad apples" (as was so long maintained), they might have weathered the storm. In fact, it's become apparent that from the outright criminality of phone hacking to the louche croneyism of the Sodding Chipbutty set, to the systematic way in which papers regularly choose to "monster" (I believe is the word) certain harmless groups and individuals, and the toothlessness of the PCC in redressing such injuries, the press has been a classic example of power without responsibility and the effects of same. I believe that if they want to fight back, which they cannot effectively do without the public's goodwill, they must own that fact.
Reply
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