THE REFORMED DRUNK, THE PROSTITUTE AND THE CENSOR

Trevor Kavanagh, the Political Editor of The Sun has suddenly discovered virtue and like a reformed drunk or petty embezzler he wants to tell the world. Thus over the last two days I have witnessed him haranguing TV interviewers with his demands that ‘the press be kept free.’ All he demands, he says, “is a fair hearing.” That would be the sort of hearing that The Sun gave to the victims of Hillsborough, the Trade Union Movement, Neil Kinnock, East European Immigrants, Liberty, the EU…….I know, I know, enough already this article cannot be that long.

Chutzpah can often be funny, bare faced cheek on stilts, however The Sun has caused too much damage in too many people’s lives for far too long to be funny. Strip Mr Kavanagh’s argument of the hyperbole however and there is validity in some of the points he makes. Freedom of the press, something the Sun used, abused and dragged through the gutter as it trawled for salacious gossip, pursued the vendetta’s and petty spite of the Murdoch empire, operating as a crime network, is far to important to be championed by the odious Mr Kavanagh. 

So who else should we look to champion the cause of press freedom? Is it Mr David Cameron, The Prime Minister who now seeks to present himself as the champion of our ancient liberties? Dripping with the outrage of a Milton, fired up with the controlled passion of a John Stuart Mill, the trusty sword of freedom waving above his head, is David the true defender? Alas the record suggests otherwise, for ‘call me Dave’ has been prostituting himself for the sake of press support for so long he no longer know when it is no longer acceptable to stand under a streetlight flashing a bit of thigh in the hope of a positive headline. For Mr Cameron’s cries of fidelity to press liberty from the despatch box carry about as much sincerity as the greeting in a Hallmark card. He is hoping that this last act of prostration before the Sun and the Daily Mail might just be enough to guarantee their support at the next election. LOL Rebecca Brooks might well text whilst killing the limbo hours whilst on bail.

I respect and admire The Hacked Off campaigners and loathe the squalid little coterie of Paul Dacre and company that are, using the only weapons they know how to smear and malign them. I think their intentions are good but I think they are profoundly wrong in the direction in which they wish to travel in regulating a free press.

The disgusting dung heap of our current tabloid press does need to be dealt with, and this is beginning to happen; fortunately commercial pressures and the rise of the internet has already greatly curtailed their malign influence on our culture. We are also now seeing more and more criminals from the world of tabloid journalism being brought before the courts; which is of course what should have happened years ago. It was not of course only the gutter press that was out of control but the police in general and the met in particular had begun to act as lackeys, providing information, providing cover and general fetch and carry work, whilst politicians went to any lengths, travelling half way across the world, to curry favour at the court of King Murdoch. A cancer had grown in the at the heart of civic society and we are now seeing the consequences of a failure to ensure a fair playing field in the field of media ownership, of a culture in which only the very rich and the very powerful could defend themselves against a malign press with a pernicious agenda.  

Given all of this it is understandable that victims should now want the press reigned in, but again I think they are wrong and I do not believe, despite all their pain that they should be given the last word in this matter.The consequences of doing so I believe could be ultimately disastrous for a genuinely free press seeking to speak truth to power.

For waiting in the wings are the censors, those whose agenda is more about silencing the impertinence of investigative journalism, who wish to stifle comment and keep hidden and secret the workings of the state and big corporations. There are also those, and it pains me to say it, on the left who have always confused a free press with capitalist excess and want to give the press a good kicking regardless of the consequences.

My fear is not that if Labour and the Lib Dems get their way tomorrow we will have lost a free press overnight, no. my concern is about precedent, for where once the state has placed a footprint, it is there to stay and sure as the sun will rise tomorrow other steps will follow.

Ultimately it will be the weak and powerless who will suffer from the gradual erosion of press freedom; it will be a future in which those who already operate in the dark will feel gradually more confident, to do what they will, free from prying eyes and scrutiny.

There is much that could happen very quickly to strengthen a free press and weaken the grip that the salacious newspapers have on our culture.

1. Strengthen greatly the concept of public interest defence, whilst making invasions of privacy and intrusion bereft of such a defence subject to punitive damages and possible criminal proceedings.
2. If a paper is adjudged to have broken the press code in any such proceedings, without a public interest defence, again punitive damages should apply.
3. Completely dismantle our current libel laws which are a disgrace and have made London a libel magnet for every unsavoury character across the globe and have taken redress out of the reach of all but a select few. This current state of affairs only suits wealthy lawyers and their considerably wealthier clients
4. Make it easier to set up a newspaper/Website/News agency. Provide tax breaks and a range of other support. The free flow of information is the lifeblood of any healthy society
5. The press cannot have a veto on who sits on a press council, input yes, a veto no.*There should also be a bias in selecting press members against the large newspaper groups like News International, Trinity Mirror, Richard Desmond and The Barclay Brothers. The chair should not be a member of the press.
6. The press cannot enjoy any say over where a correction/apology is placed. This should be the decision of any press panel, with the chair having the final say. This may sometimes be unfair, though not as unfair as the present arrangement.

I could add some more points, but you get the drift. The press could sign up to points 2, 5 and 6 tomorrow; the government to points 1 and 3 and statute could be avoided. I fear this will not happen and across the world tyrannical regimes will be able to point to the precedent of ‘free’ England knowing how to handle the irritant of a free press. This will be Murdoch’s final poisonous legacy. If it does come to pass then stand up survey your handiwork and take a bow Piers Morgan, Rebecca Brookes, Kelvin McKenzie, Paul Dacre and yes, Trevor Kavanagh.  

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*They are also, in trying to make a press council the one solution to all the problems of press misbehaviour, engaged in an activity well known to generals and military historians; they are seeking to fight the last war.

Essentially, the fear of many editors is that they would lose control of the regulator to people outside the industry. They therefore wish to have a veto on who sits in judgment on their activities and even over the writing of a new ethical code. Those days are gone only someone completely blind to the havoc the tabloid press has caused could believe in such a proposition. See http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2013/mar/14/leveson-conflict-statute-regulator-work

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