I never did like practical jokes. Anything which causes unsuspecting people to be embarrassed, let alone humiliated, is something which is always made me feel uncomfortable, even whilst everyone else around me is laughing. Exposing, ridiculing and even humiliating those in power at any level is something quite different.
That doesn't mean I abhor all 'stunts' – I've been involved in a few on April Fool's Days. One, in West Berlin, involved the alleged escape of a Lama from the zoo and involved the participation of the Royal Military Police and so on. Good fun, and quite a few listeners were taken in and perhaps felt a bit foolish, but, as we used at the radio stations 'nobody died'. I was also a willing participant, indeed initiator, in 'phoney phone calls' back in the UK, some of them involved me voicing 'characters'. Most of these were for other radio presenters. Sometimes we got into trouble; there were complaints, to which our invariable response/defence was: "It was only done in fun, we didn't intend to cause any offence." (You can probably see where this Blog post is going). Being young and cocky and egging each other on like two naughty schoolboys, we probably were guilty of not paying heed to the fact that not all our 'victims' would shrug off such a stunt as we would. Having a job which involves talking to the unseen masses from a sound-proofed box is a very strange job and attracts a rather unusual personality. To me, going into a studio, opening up a microphone and talking is – or certainly was – about as unremarkable as for most people going into kitchen and making a cup of tea.
So I am sure it's true that most radio types –often a bit insecure, needy, often surprisingly shy and even awkward outside the studio in 'real life' but with a rock-solid belief in our abilities – are not best placed to empathise with how 'ordinary' people might react. Add a highly competitive, aggressive, commercial radio environment, as in Australia, and sooner or later somebody is going to get hurt. In the UK we saw it with the Ross/Brand affair (and this was on the BBC, with its regulatory environment and 'baggage'). In this case of course it did not have the same fatal consequences as appears to have resulted from the 2DayFM/King Edward VII hospital London nurse tragedy. In the cases of the justifiable complaints by grieving families against sections of the UK (mostly tabloid) press - also working in a highly competitive market with shrinking revenues - we have seen a highly aggressive, sometimes amoral, journalistic culture with grievous consequences, detailed in the Leveson Inquiry report into the culture, practices and ethics of the press.
This is not to excuse these various lapses in human decency, and the failure of various managements to reign in the wildest reaches of its staff, but it is to try and explain it. More importantly in the answer to 'where do we go from here?' question, this Blog post argues strongly that, not only are any amount of laws and regulations useless in the absence of individual moral codes (the 2DayFM, Ross/Brand, and communications interceptions and harassment that exercised Leveson were already 'outlawed'), but in seeking to add more laws/regulations to the UK press there is a very grave risk of further restricting that which is put onto the public domain. In short: you cannot make people good by passing 'a law of niceness'; furthermore, you might suffer the law of unintended consequences in allowing a lot of nastiness to flourish unchecked and out of sight and mind of the public.
For a clear example of how the most regulated 'they're all angels aren't they?' profession can go so horribly wrong, look no further than the Royal College of Nursing. Nurses are subject to strict assessment, examinations, including now a university degree (a terrible in my opinion, but that's another Blog!), and every hospital which employs them has its own mission statement, code of conduct, complaints procedure, etc., etc. And yet far from being a few bad apples, here we have report after damning report which shows that nursing standards, especially in geriatric wards, are sometimes so lamentable that people can be treated worse than battery hens. And please don't tell me this is ALL due to the 'cuts;' and under-pressure staff, because I have witnessed this in the boom years and where nurses, far from being under pressure, were perfectly relaxed, chatting away to each other about their boyfriends, price of shoes, etc., whilst patients just yards from them were in desperate need of water. You didn't need to study nursing for three years to see that. You needed common humanity and a respect for human life and dignity. My wife and I did what was needed. I am surprised they didn't report me for 'acting inappropriately' and offending their staff (they always have those notices in hospitals, don't they? Can we now have ones that tell us how to complain against staff?).
Clearly from so many scandals since then (2006) and the heart-breaking testimony of Labour MP Ann Clwyd this week and the bulging post bags up and down the country, this is far from a one off. OF COURSE most nurses aren't like this. Most are dedicated, kind, brilliant people who go the extra mile, even, as with the nurse who apparently took her own life, so mortified was she by the Oz radio station prank phone call, walking a dementia patient on her day off. Most police officers are dedicated, public-spirited people, who form the thin blue line against violence and other offences against property and people; most MPs and councillors of all parties work tirelessly for their constituents and generally try to make the lives of ordinary people and their communities a better place. Of course they do! AND, most press journalists work for little money, to try and deliver the news they think is important for their readers, against impossible deadlines, ever-growing outlets and officials who hide behind walls of PR, data protection, privacy, threats of legal action, and sheer lies and obfuscation. The press regulate themselves, the professionals don't. And the difference is…? Next to nothing, except proportionately I would say there are more nurses, police officers, etc. who don't do their job according to normal standards of decency and humanity than do journalists. OK, you're laughing now, yes? Because it MUST be true, mustn't it, because one lot are professionals, and the journalists aren't. NOR SHOULD THEY BE!
It does make me laugh when I hear members of the good old British public opine that journalists should have a professional body, just like nurses, teachers, and (standby to ROFL), lawyers. Yes, those true power-without-responsibility parasites! Just one teensie weensie problem with this wheeze: the whole point of such bodies is that they have the ultimate sanction is for those found to be closely negligent, etc.to be struck off so they can't practice. Like that for journalists, would you? And, who, exactly, would be on this board to decide who and who could not practice as journalists. Terrifyingly, Labour's Andy Burnham appeared to agree with a questioner from (please God, no!) Liverpool in last week's Question Time who proposed the very same thing.
It is now some 10 days since the near 2000 page report into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press by the inquiry under Lord Justice Brian Leveson was released. On the eve of its publication I produced what might fairly be described as 'a rant podcast'. I am able to say now that the Leveson report is not as bad as I had feared – it is far, far worse.
The element of 'statutory underpinning' of regulation that I had feared was indeed in there, but what I hadn't expected was that Levenson would recommend that those very limited exceptions and freedoms granted to the press and in the way it interacts with official bodies should either be made illegal or, would be so time-consuming that, in practice, they will fall into disuse.
Just a quick summary for those who haven't had the joy of reading those million odd words: Leveson proposes that the limited exemptions in the use of data by journalists should not only be scrapped, but the criminal penalties be increased; ditto protection of journalistic sources. He proposes that off- the-record briefings between journalists and senior police officers should now be recorded and detailed in a public record, which will of course kill them off, and that those who refuse to sign up to the new regulatory body and who become the subject of defamation action will be unable to recover their costs, even if they win! If they will lose they will suffer 'exemplary damages'.
This, as Mick Hume's brilliant article in spike.com argues, will effectively lead to a form of press licensing, even without the government appointed body Ofcom becoming the "backstop regulator for refuseniks. Furthermore, Levenson did not remotely understand or acknowledge what a secretive society Britain is; that it has the most draconian defamation laws of any supposedly democratic country and that the use by Leveson's fellow judges of injunctions and super-injunctions themselves produce pre-publication censorship. The principle of 'publish and be dammed' has already gone out of the window.
But everything's going to be OK even so, cos our Brian (Leveson) proposes that there should be a new law of some sort from the government 'guaranteeing press freedom'. Phew! Yup, just like they had in the USSR Constitution and just about every authoritarian state of the last 150 years or so. Ah! But what's this? Oh, hang on a mo – there's something in the small print. You see, this total press freedom malarkey is only 'guaranteed', ahem 'as it is for a legitimate purpose and is necessary in a democratic society'. See that coach and horses pounding past the Tower of London – which imprisoned one of the greatest champions of press freedom, John Wilkes? Wouldn't EVERY dictatorship in the world, with a fig-leaf pretence of democracy sign up for that one? This is actually worse than having no guarantee, because it gives the state the right to judge want is and is "necessary in a democratic society". One of the plus points for our weird non-codified rag-bag of a Constitution (as our Prime Minister with his First from Oxford on British Constitutional History will know) is that 'what isn't written down can't be torn up'. The freedom of the press was never codified but has been tacitly acknowledged and this is actually FAR better than some code which can be interpreted by, erm, any old judge.
It is this sort of naivety, poverty of ideas and lack of intellectual heft that was the most surprising and disappointing part of Leveson. Mind you, the warning signs were there when our Brian got into a right old tizzie when an elected politician – the nerve of the man! – suggested his Lordship might not quite have grasped the importance of press freedom. Brian admonished him severely and complained to his masters in government.
The final sentence of his executive summary and at the press statement (let's not dignify it by calling it a conference – there were no questions allowed from the impertinent hacks: the very idea! And anyway, Lord Sir Justice Brian had to cash his vast fee from the inquiry and head off to Australia for a no doubt lucrative speaking tour; he hadn't got time to defend his report!) was:
This is the seventh time in 70 years that these issues have been addressed. No one can think it makes any sense to contemplate be an eighth.
Well, I think we'll decide that! He rounds off his peroration by saying the ball as now in the politicians' court, thus emphasising that it must now be in the hands of the law-makers, not the press, or indeed the public.
But Sir Brian was greatly impressed by, and respectful towards, the many grievance groups who came to give testimony as to the iniquities of the press. This approach gives a clue as to what we can expect once 'third party complaints' are allowed. At least one of these groups allegedly has a rather 'robust' approach to its criticism of British military. Apparently. Unfortunately, I've only read this and so can't repeat it, as a libel repeated is still a libel and I haven't the time and resources to check on what this group has actually stated, so that I can defend my statements in a defamation hearing - and I won't, unlike Leveson, resort to relying on Wikipedia for my information. I don't need reminding how unreliable that can be, Lord Leveson, I really don't! But just two words: Brett Straub!
One of the most persistent criticisms of certain sections of the national press is the exposure of sexual peccadilloes which have 'no public interest'. In most of these I have no interest either. Quite honestly, I had no idea what Steve Coogan had been up to until I read the Leveson report and I was a stout defender of Max Mosley's right, as it is every Englishman's, to be whipped by leather-clad women in a dungeon of his choosing. The justification that he was head of Formula 1 motor-racing and therefore a 'public person' is ridiculous. Ditto the 'love rat' stories of footballers, even football captains. As I've remarked before: if we take our moral guidance from obscenely well-paid young men who merely have an exceptional talent for kicking a ball (or hitting, throwing one, etc.) then we really are f****d. The trouble is, far greater minds than mine have been unable to construct a law or regulation that 'outlaws' the investigation and reporting of what should be purely private matters and allows the investigation into corruption, wrongdoing, hypocrisy and lies by those who DO spend public money, decide on public policy, etc. Public and private affairs (in every sense) are often entwined. Neither has anyone – and God knows, many have tried – been able to even produce an acceptable-to-all formula for what is or isn't 'in the public interest'. Even the great brains of Lord Justice Leveson and his six advisors apparently been able to produce such a definition.
Neither was there any acknowledgement that the at least PART of the reason that newspapers have tended to 'go after' salacious stories concerning celebrities, and indeed the Royal Family, rather than the exposure of genuine wrongdoing, etc., is because they often cannot make the 'public interest' stories stand up to the very high tests of 'justification' under the Defamation Act, whereas if they can obtain the necessary photo's, transcripts of conversations, etc. of a bedroom/car romp between a man and a woman other than his wife, then they can prove that the allegations are true. Plus, 'as ani fule noes', sex sells and the British public often have contemptible double-standards and hypocrisy: tut-tutting at such stories, but eagerly devouring them. Sales of the Sunday tab's shot up when such stories were printed, so let's get real about public mores in the wider sense.
It is not a matter of newspapers directly feeling the weight of law under the Leveson proposals, but the thought that you might well have to account for your stories, especially in response to a third-party complaint, will definitely have a 'chilling' effect on the press on both sides of the Irish border. Because even if you think that a complaint from part of the 'grievance industry' will probably fail, you know that you are going to have to spend an awful lot of time – and that means money – preparing your evidence and presenting it, et cetera. This is bound to mean the press will decide such stories are just too much trouble. The road to hell is indeed paved with good intentions. There is a delicious irony in that, had Leveson's recommendations been implemented at the time, The Guardian's Nick Davies would probably not have been able to expose the phone-hacking scandal at the News of the World which kicked off the while Leveson Inquiry.
The knee-jerk response of Labour leader Ed Miliband of accepting the report "in its entirety" was one of the most contemptible of any leading politician in my lifetime and deserves the utmost ferocious and relentless attacks. It is true that since then Labour has been furiously backpedalling, wittering on now that it accepts the "principles" of Leveson. And this man wants to become Prime Minister! I would expect this sort of shameless playing to the gallery and lack of principle from the Liberal Democrats, but Miliband had obviously read the opinion polls, studied the focus groups and realised that there was a vast, sentimental outpouring of support for the innocent victims of phone hacking and gross invasions of privacy: all of which, of course, are and were illegal under the law of the land - it's just that the police were either too incompetent or corrupt to have dealt with it. Labour's intellectual and moral weaknesses was brilliantly exposed by Andrew Neil on BBC TV's The Daily Politics, the day after the publication of the report, in an interview with Shadow Culture Minister Helen Goodman.
Leveson Neil vs Goodman 30 Nov 2012
On the same programme, journalist David Aaronovitch made a very eloquent argument for keeping the law right away from 'underpinning' the press.
Leveson Aaronaviich
The Mick Hume article certainly covers most of the key points and criticisms of the whole approach of Leveson. However, there are one or two points that have been frequently made over the last couple of weeks which I think need further comment.
The first is the incomprehension of at least some members of the public as to why the press is treated differently from broadcasting - which, it is often held, provides not only much higher standards of journalism overall, but that it's regulatory structure and indeed legal basis does not seem to inhibit 'good', investigative, public interest journalism. This is, of course, to misunderstand or be ignorant of the completely different historical, cultural and indeed technical backgrounds of the press and broadcasting media. The latter came into being, and to some extent still remains, in a spectrum of limited choice, restricted by the availability of frequencies on which to broadcast the radio and TV signals. Therefore, it was argued, those who were granted the privilege of broadcasting should have obligations as to impartiality in the treatment of news and current affairs, and much higher standards of taste and decency. Furthermore, you listened and viewed programmes in your own home but in a rather public way in that you could not quickly turn over the station if tender ears or eyes suddenly entered the room or cast their gaze upon the screen. In Europe and many other parts of the world, broadcasting was at least partly funded by a compulsory form of taxation – either directly, or in the case of the UK, at once removed from the state - and with criminal penalties should you fail to cough up. Commercial companies initially had a monopoly or quasi-monopoly in the broadcasting of advertising in a particular area, so again, in addition to the points above they had greater obligations placed on them than had the press. Broadcasting also became the way for leaders to address their citizens directly, and the medium was used for relaying 'real-time' vital, even life-saving information, in war-time and in natural disasters. So the relationship with the public was quite different from the press. And the fact is, despite the multiplicity of channels and many more opportunities to broadcast, there is still limited spectrum and so, in most countries, even in the USA, you still require a licence obtained from a government agency for the right to broadcast. This is completely different from the press, where the material for medium of transmission is effectively unlimited and the distribution only circumscribed by economics and time.
Furthermore, the freedom of the press - that is to say the right to publish without a licence or permission from the state – in Britain took at least 100 years to establish and for about a century and a half after that the authorities used an effective weapon of limiting access to it by the poor and the downtrodden through taxation. So a historical parallel would mean that we still have around 10 years to go before we are at the equivalent historical development of the press in allowing the right to broadcast without permission from the state, but all the media today benefits from the long and bloody struggle to establish the right for the press to report even the official workings of government through Parliament and the like.
The principle then, is that the press is no more or less free than the ordinary citizen and that there is no distinction in law, except in a very limited arena in areas such as court reporting, between a journalist and any other citizen. The rights of the citizen are linked inextricably with the rights of the press; you limit the latter and you have inevitably curtailed the former. This point is not seem to have been driven home nearly well enough because most people don't seem to 'get' that legal restraints on the press are legal restraint on them. There are certain laws which are more likely to affect the press than the ordinary citizen, e.g. defamation (although of course now that anyone with an Internet connection can be a publisher, many are finding out the hard way that application through social media such as Twitter brings them into the scope of these laws), and Contempt of Court. It is demonstrably true that the non-journalist citizen can fall foul of these Acts of Parliament in any case. People have been sued for defamation for what they have written in a letter; others from communicating the secrets of the jury room. 'Official secrets' – which covers a notoriously wide area of public life and policy and, like data protection and privacy, frequently used by the political classes to repress anything embarrassing - is another area which drags in the journalist and the non-journalist, but it is more likely to be invoked for those who have published to a wide audience.
If the principle of 'quality under the law for press and non-press alike' could be maintained then I would have no problem with a lower court, for example to deal with defamation cases, being introduced. It must be right that people have access to legal redress when they feel that unjustified – which in these terms means without foundation in fact – have been defamed in any branch of the media, whether that be print, broadcast or online, and that you do not have to risk your home through losing a case. Defamation is currently, in the main, a tool of the powerful and wealthy. It must also be right that those who feel they have suffered harassment or invasion of privacy by the press, which is unlawful but may not meet the necessary level for criminal prosecutions to take place, to seek redress in the courts. So a form of tribunal – which clearly would mean a new statute– which was open to every citizen to seek redress, but was not just about what the press, would have my support, because it complies with the principle that the press has no fewer or greater rights than any other citizen. It would also incorporate ALL media other than broadcasting, e.g. social media, about which Leveson, bizarrely, had almost nothing to say.
Another argument that has been raised, and I suspect will be used even more forcefully as we get to the opposition's or government's Bills before Parliament in the New Year, is that what is proposed in terms of 'statutory underpinning' is no more than exists in the Republic of Ireland – and there doesn't seem to be any problem with this so far as the press operating newspapers in both the Republic and United Kingdom is concerned, so what's the problem? But this is looking at the issue through the wrong end of the telescope. The reason for this, I contend – and of course I can't prove it because like all these things there is no 'control' on this and you cannot prove a negative – is that the Irish press does not find itself inhibited by such statutes, is because it is cheek by jowl with the press in the UK which does not have it! In other words, once the UK press is run along the same levels of Ireland you will find that both suffer greater restrictions.
The question of culture is crucial here: the reason why we have such a relatively vigorous form of news and current affairs coverage in the broadcast media, especially television, is precisely because a more assertive culture was brought in when independent television began in the UK in 1955, and with it a monopoly supplier of national and international news to the regional/federal structure of ITV, with journalists who were not from the BBC deferential/civil service mode, but from Fleet Street. Such people used their skills of interrogation and analysis, honed in The Street of Shame, on the new commercial channel. This in turn led the BBC to completely shake up its coverage of news and current affairs because its cringe-making, fawning approach to anyone in power was now ruthlessly exposed as such. Furthermore, rather than society falling apart, it was seen that this more rigorous form of journalism greatly benefited democracy and public understanding. Similarly, when commercial radio began in the early '70s, it greatly benefited from a more vigorous and populist tone imported from the more vigorous democracies of Australia and the USA. Clearly, it stands to reason that the reverse could also be true. Once the UK becomes more cautious and intimidated, so will journalism in Ireland and in many other countries.
Not only that, but as the World Press Freedom Committee has starkly argued, any statutory element to Britain's press will be seized on by every autocrat in the world, most seriously, those that at the moment might be edging towards some degree at least of press freedom. This was explored in an edition of BBC Radio 4's The Media Show, on the eve of the publication of the Leveson report:
Leveson, world reaction from Media Show 28 November
As has often been said, you cannot be a little bit pregnant, and you cannot have a little bit of 'statutory underpinning' and still claim to have a free press. Yes, it would be lovely if these hard-fought for rights of freedom to publish without special laws or licensing were exercised by press owners fully embedded in British society – not largely based abroad, using their influence to manipulate public opinion and intimidate politicians into supporting wider laws and policies which would help their businesses, often including those unconnected with the media. As has often been said: we have a free press – for everyone who can afford to own one. This is a powerful argument for imposing regulation in the UK (in fact, for me, the most compelling one). But, unfortunately, there is not a queue forming to run the many loss-making 'serious' UK national newspapers. If Rupert Murdoch or his successor decides he's had enough of the British press, especially with new regulations, and can't afford to lose the £100 million a year The Times is currently costing his company, then The Thunderer will almost certainly have rolled for the last time. But a law will be a 'catch all' and affect all those who work for and edit the Murdoch 'quality' press, as well as all the others. And once parliament has got its claws into the press it will not let go. As has also been said by others, the UK will not become a Zimbabwe or a Ukraine, but it will be different and there will be a ratchet effect.
You can find lots more arguments from people with a wide-ranging backgrounds including those who have 'suffered' at the hands of the press, at the Free Speech Network site.
The national newspaper editors who met last week amongst themselves and twice with the Prime Minister – no local newspapers represented I note though of course they will be hit just as much by any changes in regulation, although largely blameless in the much-noted excesses of the few – may come up with a scheme that will satisfy many. There is talk of a Royal Charter for the press, as with the BBC and Bank of England. This, which would come under the Crown through the Privy Council (part of Britain's secret governance, which few of the public even know about and all member of which have to take an Oath of Secrecy – forever! - and which about which of course Leveson had nothing to say) would come under control of Her Majesty's ministers, not even directly subject to parliament. A Very British Coup, indeed. In any case, it is clearly not going to satisfy the Hacked Off campaign: it seems that nothing less than a specific press law will satisfy them.
Those who believe in the press should be free from any special laws or compulsory regulation are in for the fight of their lives. The war of the words is now like The War of the Worlds, the radio dramatisation by Orson Welle's Mercury Theatre on Hallowe'en in 1938 which caused widespread panic by those who hadn't heard the continuity announcement that it WAS a dramatization of a Martian invasion. It led to suicides and demonstrated the 'hypodermic needle' power of the still then relatively new radio medium. Welles was castigated for his irresponsibility; of seeking sensation for ratings. As we've seen in this week's tragedy, we had not seen the last of such accusations. Ironically, though, the hero of the novel and the various adaptations, was a journalist. By coincidence, the latest stadium touring 'realisation' of Jeff Wayne's great musical began its tour in Liverpool last week-end, with Liam Neeson succeeding the incomparable Richard Burton in taking the role of the journalist. Here's a bit of fun I had with it…
Leveson - War of the Words
I am going to finish this record-breaking length Rudinblog with a few extracts from the first chapter of Mick Hume's latest book, 
There is No Such Thing As a Free Press – and we need one more than ever.
Whichever side of the argument you are on – or are still not sure – please buy this book and give it to any friends who might be interested, not because I have any financial or personal interest in the book – I've never even met Mick Hume or, at the time of writing this, had any communication with him or his publishers. It is fascinating, though, that a former member of the Revolutionary Communist Party can make common cause with the Jacob Rees-Mogg's of this world; the latter gave a superb speech and a number of brilliant interventions in the House of Commons debate this week.
This, in any event, is about as powerful and cogent argument as I've yet read:
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I agree that there is much to dislike in the British press. But I also believe that freedom is inevitably a messy business. It is not a privilege to be handed out only to those who meet your moral standards. The fact that some journalists and publications might choose to misuse and even "abuse" their "vital rights" is no reason to try to limit or restrain the right to freedom of expression. To seek to sanitise freedom is to risk killing it. A "bad", "toxic" and "unethical" press that is free will always be better than a "good", "clean" and "pure" press that is unfree, if we want to stand a chance of getting close to the truth. But but me no buts about a free press please.
Press freedom is not some fluffy but impractical ideal, like "free love", to be butted out of existence by those who disapprove of its consequences. Freedom of expression is not an empty slogan to play lip service to, like motherhood, apple pie, European Union or the Big Society. It is a hard won historic right that helped to pave the way for the creation of the modern democratic world. Free speech is the fundamental bedrock liberty of our society.
Without the freedom to think, say, right, publish, read, hear, love and hate what we choose, other freedoms would be impossible to imagine. The Enlightenment that brought us into the modern age of reason and rational thought, of science and the arts, was only possible because of the struggle for the freedom of the press that went alongside it. Freedom of expression remains the only hope we have of knowing anything. It is how society conducts its debate between clashing opinions and makes its decisions about what it believes to be right and true. A free press, in all its forms, is the lifeblood of a free society and a vital citizenry…
Nobody should be naive or complacent about the problems of journalistic standards today. Nor should we try to take a morally neutral view of an irresponsible press.
But the far more important point is that freedom of expression is always a messy affair. It means allowing others the freedom to publish things that we may not want to see. As George Orwell put it in his 1940 essay on "The Freedom of the Press", written as an (ironically unpublished) preface to italicise Animal Farm, "if liberty means anything at all it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear"….
However you or I might wish it to be, the hard truth is that a free press does not have to conform to our or anybody else's notions of what is good journalism, or of what is ethical to report, or of what is too offensive to say or show. The principle of press freedom might look pristine when set down on paper. But in reality that lofty principle can be exploited for low purposes. Freedom is indeed a muddy and sometimes bloody business.
It might come as a shock to a few more naive souls. But the truth is that not everybody who chooses to write for a newspaper or to rant on the web, or in other ways to say something in public, will have the piety of Jesus Christ, the wisdom of Socrates or the purity of soul of Hugh Grant or Max Mosley. Nor should they be expected to. There is no requirement to pass a morality test in order to earn the right to free expression. Contrary to the cliche of contemporary prejudice, your inalienable rights are not dependent upon the fulfilment of what somebody else claims are your responsibilities…
In the words of Deputy Assistant Commissioner Sue Akers of the Metropolitan Police, appearing before the Leveson Inquiry, the trouble with the tabloids is not just that they have employed dubious methods to obtain information, but have done so merely to publish "stories which I would describe the salacious gossip, not what I would describe as being remotely in the public interest". The notion of a senior police officer issuing guidelines on what sort of news is fit for the press to publish is not one we might normally associate with a healthy democracy. In the other-worldly atmosphere created around the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry, however, the idea of a top cop defining "the public interest" as part of the attempt to police the motives and minds of tabloid journalists – and their readers – could now pass for normal…
Whatever shape of the new system of press regulation eventually takes, the tabloids have already been found guilty not only of crimes against "ethical public interest journalism", but of inhumanity. This should perhaps not be too surprising as there appears to be quite widespread view among the literati, luvvies and tweeters that tabloid journalists and editors are not really human at all, and hence undeserving of the human right to free expression.
Tabloid reporters are, according to one writer from the Independent giving evidence at Levenson, "a different breed" from quality journalist such as her. Hugh Grant told Inquiry that Britain's tabloids had nurtured "a culture of pure evil". Comedian Steve Coogan said some tabloid hacks were "sociopaths" inhabiting "an amoral universe". Writer Will Self described a former NotW journalist who appeared at the Inquiry is exhibiting "a feral, rat like persona". A professor of journalism observed that "a more off-putting example of the species it would be hard to imagine". One fancied it was not the human species she had in mind. A former editor of BBC radio's flagship Today programme declared that "the tabloid press is peopled by beings who are not like us". Meanwhile the enlightened modern class of Twitter and Facebook users acted as backing chorus for Leveson, holding forth for four months on the merits of "inhuman" tabloid "scum" and "animals"…
The contention of this book is that freedom of the press, like all meaningful freedoms, is not divisible. You cannot say that you abolish slavery, but then do so only for white people or Christians. Similarly you cannot declare your support for a free press, but only defend freedom for those parts of it that meet your chosen standards, however high-minded those motives might appear.
Freedom of expression is not to be rationed out like charity, to only the most "deserving" cases. A right is right, and is not limited by any incumbent responsibilities. Of course any good journalist should be prepared to stand up and take responsibility for what they write, and for the methods they used to get that story. But the wish to see responsible journalism cannot be used to trample on the freedom of others.
RIGHT!
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