The press are lying. They are just lying.
The press would have you believe that if you have a "statutory underpinning of an independent regulator then it is tantamount to letting the government run every newspaper and that you would have political censorship on every story.
That is not true. It is no where near being true. If truth were something that was stood right in front of you, the story the press are now spinning would be on Pluto.
What Lord Leveson is suggesting is an independent regulator – like The British Medical Council, or The IPCC (though better and actually willing to punish people properly, instead of just wussing out and letting them get away with murder over and over again) or something like that – that is backed up by a series of laws so that it can force the press to behave properly.
It is not – NOT – a panel of MPs sitting in judgement on the press.
But that’s what the press would have you believe, because – if you hear that we are going to have political interference in the press, you automatically go "no – that’s bad". I go "no – that’s bad!!". The idea of Cameron or one of his gang of thugs deciding what can and can’t be in the press is truly horrific and something that terrifies me.
But if you were to be told that a regulatory body that could punish papers for stepping out of line – for harassing the public, for harassing the victims of crime (something I speak about from experience), for publishing stories that are not in the public interest and so forth – then it would sound like a much better idea.
Just to be clear – this body won’t have the ability to issue injunctions against stories being printed, and this body won’t supersede the courts and deal with actual criminal offences (hacking, libel, etc). It will just ensure that if the press want to pursue their stories, they do it in a decent, acceptable way.
As I said last night, the press don’t want this because they will lose money. And anything else they say is a lie, and an appallingly bad lie at that.
They can hide behind high moral statements like "freedom of speech" and "a moral duty to act as guardians of the public interest" but that is just a load of bollocks.
They want to make money, and they don’t care how they do it. And so the reason they are so resistant to someone telling them they have to behave is because they won’t make as much money.
So they fact they are lying about what "statutory underpinning" is is no big surprise. If they had to toe the line and were subject to legal oversight (like EVERY OTHER agency in this country) they would have to think twice about publishing stories about Ryan Giggs and Max Mosley, and instead stick to stories that are actually in the public interest.
Which was probably less interesting and so sell less copies.
I am a liberal, and I think we need this. Because while I know that freedom of the press is important, I think that EVERYONE who is saying "oh we need a free press – we shouldn’t let the government limit them" is not realising just how bad press intrusion can be, and just how many people are affected by it.
Every other agency that has the power to affect people’s lives has a regulator. So why should the press be any different? You print that someone is suspected paedophile, and it will ruin their life forever. No matter if you print an apology, no matter if you pay them damages – their lives will be ruined.
And yet if the press do this, they are fined, and that’s it! Journalists are free to do this day after day after day, and never get punished for it.
And yet people think that their right to do this is inviolable.
I can only assume that everyone who is defending the press has never been a victim of it, because otherwise they would not be so utterly stupid.
Cameron – Cameron is just a coward. He doesn’t want to do what he knows he has to do, because he knows that in between the time he announces it, and the time it becomes law, he will be crucified in every single paper – even those that like him – and so will never get elected again. (Not that he ever will anyway, but you get the idea).
But if the BBC did anything like what the press do, Cameron would have their balls in a sling and would feed them to the wolves.
The press can do what they want, but if the BBC were even slightly implicated in half of what the papers consider "every day business", it would be shut down on the spot.
Cameron is a coward. He said he would follow Leveson’s suggestion as long as they weren’t "bonkers", but now he is ignoring them completely.
Cameron is a coward because he will not do what he knows is right because it could cost him his job.
A proper leader – a decent human being – would be willing to do what is right even if it costs them their job.
Where have you gone, Robin Cook, a nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
The press needs to be free, but freedom does not mean you have no one looking over your shoulder.
Everyone in this country would say they are free – we have democracy, we have a system of laws, we have the rule of law. But I would say we are a free country, even though we have a police force to uphold the rule of law.
So if we can be free, even while we have people watching what we do, then why can’t the press be free even if someone is enforcing some level of decent behaviour on them?