The NOTW broke the existing laws of the land. We don't need new laws. We simply need the old laws to be applied. This scandal is as much about the corruption of the law-makers and the law-enforcers as it is about journalists.
I have not kept a close eye on this, except the BBC reports, but from what I have seen your criticism of the House is spot on. While I believe in limits on press freedom, it merely extends to not invading privacy of citizens (and despite my journalist father, I do question if the private lives of public figures should be completely without limits, particularly as regards their children). Unfortunately the US has seen the total embrace of Goebbels' Big Lie as a method of argument. While I think at least one of yours (the same who eliminated the News of the World) had much to do with popularizing that, it seems to have been embraced by both major U.S. parties without hesitation or even acknowledgment of the source. We once had giants on both sides too; now I'm damned if I can recall a single Senator of either party who has some stature since Kennedy died. (Yes, Chappaquidick; yes, many thought his ideas wrong; but he was respected among many of the Old Guard, Democrats and otherwise, and for me, that's the bottom line for a statesman/
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Thank you, I'm greatly obliged.wemyssJuly 11 2011, 19:16:39 UTC
Must dissent re EMK, mind: not what wd be here 'a great House of Commons man', but more to point, cannot concur that regard of fellow pols is measure of man: in 1940, Winston was loathed, Clem was target of every rival in Labour (wh was every Labour Member), &c. An American friend of mine, a Democrat and local party leader, used to say that if Sen Byrd of W Va were 'the conscience of the Senate', that body was sociopathic. I tend to distrust pols whom other pols find cosy: means they're conspiring together against public.
As another example of which...steepholmJuly 11 2011, 19:31:55 UTC
...witness Anthony Doulton Blair, admired by politicians and despised by everyone else.
I think you're right to signal a danger - i.e. that politicians may use this series of events as an excuse to blinker, muzzle and seel investigative journalists, forgetting (or not) that it was investigative journalists alone who brought said events to light. I haven't heard that line being taken just yet, but it's bound to come.
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The NOTW broke the existing laws of the land. We don't need new laws. We simply need the old laws to be applied. This scandal is as much about the corruption of the law-makers and the law-enforcers as it is about journalists.
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I think you're right to signal a danger - i.e. that politicians may use this series of events as an excuse to blinker, muzzle and seel investigative journalists, forgetting (or not) that it was investigative journalists alone who brought said events to light. I haven't heard that line being taken just yet, but it's bound to come.
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