November 2011

A Free Press Means to Publish and be Damned

Our most cherished liberty is up for grabs at the Leveson inquiry, but it cannot be entrusted to a new tribunal to muzzle newspapers

Milton warned that "the attempt to keep out evil doctrine by licensing is like the exploit of that gallant man who thought to keep out the crows by shutting his park gate". Today Britain is full of gallant men — judges, politicians, hacked celebrities and that Gilbertian anomaly "the media commentator" — who think that the law is not good enough for newspapers. They must be "regulated" — by some statutory or otherwise empowered body of worthies rather like themselves. The Prime Minister, declaring himself in favour of "independent regulation" (Labour prefers "self-regulation") has tasked Lord Justice Leveson with recommending "a new and more effective policy and regulatory regime". This clamour is the illogical result of the way in which the News of the World, with the connivance of Scotland Yard, breached the criminal law, by bribing police officers for information and by illegally hacking into telephones. Evidently there is a need to enforce existing law, but what is the case for supplementing it with a new administrative quango entitled to look over the shoulders — and to feel the collars — of those who exercise, by occupation, the right to write?