As you may be aware, in the UK, the government are trying to hash out a new set of regulations with which to bind the press, following the phone hacking scandal that has been at the fore in the news during recent months.
But do you agree that the press should be more tightly controlled? Or do you think that the press should be free to 'expose the truth' by whatever means necessary?
Does the 'end justify the means'?
Absolutely not. My quick and easy, general use test for morality of any kind is, "Does Harriet Harman support it?" if yes, you know its deplorably reprehensible.
She wants to regulate the press, yet we had laws against everything that was going on. It was not the press that needed regulation, it was the police. The police not only knew what was going on, but they were involved in it half the time, to the point that someone attempted to make money about been on the investigation of the phone hacking. that is the one that got me, they really felt so safe being corrupt, even an investigation that was bound to run in to the corruption, they thought it would only be the paper that would get any heat.
To be all this talk about press regulation is a bit of a read herring. If just one cheaky little schoolkid, broke in to your house, stole your tv, every month for a decade or so, you wouldn't be saying that we need better regulation of schools, that pupils should not be allowed home without constant adult supervision. You'd be asking what the hell are the police doing!
Some of the politicions have a terrible agenda in this, Labour particularly wanting to thank news corp for not supporting them, and also it's not without note, because many will be basing their actions on it, they have a political ideology opposing which has historically always opposed a free press. Even if it is a cheap shot to say as much.
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I always liked something Ian Hislop said about it during Levenson, we don't need new laws, we need to enforce the ones we've got.
Hacking - Illegal
Stalking - Illegal
Harassment - Illegal
Bribery - Illegal
Corruption - Illegal
Media monopolies - Illegal(until Blair, that should be brought back, but it's the one thing no-ones pursuing)
Every other thing that caused outrage - Illegal
There is a problem that Freedom of the Press has become a blanket excuse for illegal behaviour. Like all rights and freedoms it should be balanced against the freedoms and rights of others, but because of media monopolies Murdoch et al have reached too big to jail status. The second people like Murdoch feel like they could face criminal charges for such behaviour it would stop instantly, hell it only took shining a light on it for him to scrap a whole paper. Self regulation, which is what we have now and what we're ultimately getting more of, can never work without true competition.
While i personally believe that while the press should be allowed freedom to write without fear off recrimination or oppressive response, I think it's about time the government made the press accountable for infringing the civil liberities of others. While it is fair to say that they should be allowed to make an investigation into something of purport, i dont think the same laws can in conscience be used to invade a persons private life for the sake of a 'scoop', more often than not just for some superficial celebrity driven defamation. The only foreseeable downside i can see to press regulation is the motivation behind it. I cannot help but feel that the government is not doing this in the best interest of the people, but more taking advantage of a situation to benefit themselves.
It is a shame to see the police involved with such behaviour, but unsurprising. As with any country in the world, corruption runs deep within any of the state institutions. I'd like to think that although this may be true, at least in the UK the police system is far less corrupt than in most countries, but unfortunately, im probably wrong.
I would say No, there shouldn't be any binding, but the control that Murdoch and his cronies have over all political parties is ridiculous. Rumour has it that it was the editor of the Times who told Cameron to walk away from talks before the weekend. Anything that weakens the press ability to influence politics, rather than reporting it, is a good thing in my book.
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chuckskull (18-03-2013),cptwhite_uk (23-03-2013),Hicks12 (24-03-2013)
Deserve? no
Require? yes, but only to an extent.
I think those of the Press that went to any lengths to get a story, especially stories that arent in the public interest, have ruined it for everyone else.
Personally, I dont care what Max Mosley got up to in private, where as I do care a lot about MPs spending money on frivolous things and call them "expenses".
So somewhere you have to be able to draw a line, obviously the Press think everything is in the public interest, because it sells their papers, where as if you restrict them, then how are they supposed to expose public servants doing wrong things, either legally or morally?
And thats the issue with everything now, imposed on us , we have no way to " balance things " other than to use corruption ourselves .Originally Posted by chuckskull
Of course that just leads to the very issues we're taking about - so what is the point in obeying it any more ?
Your buggered either way ..
law itself is meaningless beyond some facade its there to help us - has any of the 1% been caught for corruption for their misdeeds ?
They sure as hell didnt attain that wealth fairly , and we all know it , yet follow and obey the puppets they send.
Barack says Iraq is one year away from attaining WMD , like 2 other blokes said not so long ago..
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To some extent it depends on the definition "Freedom of the press".
The 'traditional' meaning is Freedom from State control, in the the State neither owns nor controls the press, or (in the case of the BBC, which, it could be argued, is state owned) freedom of editorial content and management.
Contrast that with (say) the press in the Soviet Unin, where the press was little more than a propaganda machine with all the major newspapers owned and controlled by the State or the Communist Party.
That doesn't mean that the press is truly free, and newspaper owners can exert influence on editorial content to suit their own ends.
However generally newspapers are able to publish, subject to the laws of libel and defamation, stories that are in the public interest, and that was extremely well demonstrated by the Telegraph's expose of MP's expenses claims.
There are three problems.
The first is whether the ends justifies the means, is illegal activity ever justified to expose a 'greater' illegal activity? That is not permitted judicially, evidence has to be obtained lawfully.
The second is the confusion between what is in the public interest and what is of interest to the public. The two are not the same. Revealing MP's expense claims was in the public interest as public funds were involved. Revealing Milly Dowler's phone calls (or, I would suggest, Huhne's son's text messages) was not, although it certainly excited a prurient public's interest, and sold newspapers.
The third is accountability. Who holds the press to account when it does overstep the bounds of acceptability, and who defines what that boundary is.
Overall, I think we have a fairly responsible press, however the redress when the do get it wrong is hard to enforce, unless you have very deep pockets, and this is where some form of regulation, or punitive action may be justified.
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Agree. Society as a whole is hypocritical about this stuff though. Everybody and their dog loves perving over scantily clad actresses in bikinis taken by long range lens while they're on holidays. Or blatantly made up BS about B list celebs. Headline news stories of international importance get reduced to a picture of a woman crying in the street, rather than any attempt to explain the motives of the factions or the processes going on behind the 'human impact' story.
We've pretty much got the press we deserve. i.e. dumbed-down propaganda mixed in with soft porn.
What worries me is not so much the papers but the Beeb. It has a very definite soft left / Guardianista editorial line which permeates all but a few shows (i.e. Top Gear). If they don't like something, they've got very good at asking the same question or repeating the same insinuation. Most average plebs are too thick/lazy to spot it or care.
I think there needs to be some control over what is news worthy. Not that I think it's an easy thing to do and obviously could be misused beyond what was intended like just about any law.
But the papers need to have some common sense about what they put out , for example the hot air balloon incident in Egypt. Why is it necessary to show where that man who survived lives, there by letting everyone know he isn't there right now so could get burgled.. indeed why should anything about your private life beyond what happened to you become news just because you had an accident. I find that sort of thing just wrong,
I pretty much agree with Peterb, though I might gave put it slightly differently.
We do not have, nor ever have had, an entirely free press. Nor do we have absolute freedom of speech. Nor does any country on earth have that. There are always limits, and several of them have been mentioned above, like libel laws, hacking laws, etc.
It is not the case that the ends should always justify the means, but there are occasions where a very minor 'bad' should be overlooked in the course of exposing a far greater 'bad'. An example that comes to mind would be breaking data prorection laws to expose the malfeasances, moral corruptions and even criminal activities of MP's and their expenses.
So I entirely agree that existing laws ehould be enforced, though like with whistleblowers, there will be times when the "public interest" does justify breaking laws. That, though, is ultimately the preserve of prosecutors to decide if a case is justified and if they think it is, for a judge and jury to determine.
There is a problem, though, with letting existing laws take their course, and that is that the balance of power between hugely powerful press organisations and individuals is grossly distorted. If you can afford to throw what will be, at an absolute minimum, tens of thousands of pounds, and more like hundreds of thousands, at lawyers, then you can use libel laws. But for most of us, bringing a libel case against a major newspaper is simply not an option.
We need a balance between a press free enough to hold power to account, to pursue an MP expenses story, or a LibDem minister that perverted the course of justice by swapping driving points with his wife to avoid a driving ban and the bad publicity that would go with it, while still respecting the righrs of Joe Public. We do NOT want politicians controlling what the press can print, directly or indirectly.
But we DO want powerful papers held to account when they callously decude to print any old garbage and wreck people's lives, entirely in the absence of any actual evidence, simply to gain a "lucrative" front page scoop.
So, there needs to be a way for the little people (and that means me, you lot, and about 99.99% of the population) to get redress when the 'press' tramples all over us.
We need a method of dealing with libels, without putting everything we own, or more, on the line to do it. On the other hand, we don't want the taxpayer putting vast sums of money into the hands of libel lawyers by funding each and every person thst feels miffed in a court-based libel case, either.
So, a fair and balance press code seems reasonable. And there has long been one. The problem is, it was widely ignored, and the body supposed to be monitoring compluance was both the pet dog of the press with no inclination to do anything about it, and no teeth if it had wanted to do anything.
We need a regulator that will, therefore, have the mindset and enough powers to be able to impose sufficient pain that the powerful press organisations will think twice when it crosses the line without adequate public interest defence, and that that pain will be a significant deterrent and severe punishment.
I do not really want to see press regulation, but the arrogance of the press in a series of 'offences', time and again, decade after decade, has shown that they are not responsible enough to behave decently if left on their own.
So I wholeheartedly support measures like an apology being of the same size and prominence as a libel. A front page headline offence gets a front-page headline apology, if wrong.
Similarly, punitive damages. The impact of a press story cannot always be measured in monetary terms, but even where it can, the impact of, swy, a £100,000 loss on the average man in the street would be huge. It might well cost him his home if he owns it, and would put many into bankruptcy. But a £100,000 compensation is peanuts to, for example, a Murdoch newspaper, and indeed, they might pay that for a really good story.
Damages for grinding little peopke into the ground should hurt a paper badly enough that they'll think hard before risking it, and won't risk it at all unless they have legally clear evidence, and/or a good public interest defence.
If, as a hypothetical, David Beckham or Bill Gates, were to get a £250 fine for speeding, how much would paying it hurt? On the other hand, if an unemployed father of three, barely keeping food on the table, gets one, how much does it hurt?
For wealthy press companies, any penalty has to hurt, or it will simply be treated as a minor overhead, a cost of doing business, and ignored. But what a Murdoch paper should be fined as a punitive element, and what, say, Private Eye, should be fined would be different, the latter not being (as far as I know) part of a multi-billion pound media empire.
In the end, I wish we didn't need press regulation, but by their own actions, they've demonstrated over and again that we do. But it needs to be regulation calibrated to protect the public from outrageous abuse while at the same time, letting the press hold power to account and the feet of those in power to the fire.
The trick is in getting that balance right, and I'm far from convinced that the current cobbled together hodge-podge comporomise does that. And the process used to do the cobbling utterly stinks, with back-room deals done in the midfle of the night, in the presence of Hacked Off. This was an ideal chance for all political parties to do something openly and so clearly in the public good, but they could not resist playing political games with it.
But then Saracen what about The Times. It is after all a loss making company, despite its parent company being rather profitable indeed.
How much do you fine something that isn't a profitable going concern?
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Hold the parent company accountable and let them decide from which pot the fine is paid. Anything else and we get into a similar situation to the tax avoidance thing, just set up a spinoff company that is not profitable but shields the parent company.
Last edited by MadduckUK; 23-03-2013 at 05:52 PM.
Enough to make the owners ensure it behaves, and if it doesn't and gets caught, that the penalty hurts enough that the lesson is effective. Also, it's not just about profit, but about turnover.
It is, of course, down to a court to determine the level of punitive damages under even the current proposals, because any press orgsnisation signing up to the scheme isn't subject to them.
So .... if there's a code of practice, and the papers keep to it, and are signed up, no punitive damages.
Ultimately, it's about striking a balance.
I take issue with the question in the title of this thread TBH. Whether our current press deserve to be regulated is quite irrelevant; the pertinent question is:
"Do we, the People, deserve a press that's free of state interference?
I think you will probably be able to guess my answer to that one.
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