Don't let the politicians cut off the balls of the newspaper business
Never has so much been written with so little effect. Freedom of speech in Britain could be on the point of being consigned to the dustbin of history. And no-one seems to be willing to do a damn thing about it.
Snowden: Praise for the Guardian . . .but
Irony upon irony - one of the main obstacles to keeping politicians' fingers out of the pot is the paper flying the flag of press freedom as it attracts worldwide praise for its Snowden coverage - The Guardian.
It is surely a mistake by editor Rusbridger not to go along with the industry-wide initiative for a new UK regulatory body, shorn of the medieval adjective "Royal."
There is still time .
A truly free press really is the foundation stone of democracy. It is in America, where the major newspapers have been of one mind in supporting the Guardian's Snowden revelations.
Yet newspapers have always made mistakes: errors of fact , errors of judgement. (I wonder if Mr Dacre wishes they hadn't run that Miliband senior headline "The Man who hated Britain". Was that wording a considered judgement or simply a good sub-editor writing a snappy and provocative headline? As a former editor, I know that can happen too.)
It is amazing that the whole foetid mess over Press regulation in Britain spilled out after the Guardian ran the report, now believed to be erroneous, that Milly Dowler's cellphone had been hacked by the News of the World.
In an article in the Drum and the British Journalism Review I dared to ask in the wake of Leveson "What if Milly had been found alive?"
My point: The NotW aim in reporting the story was hopefully to find Milly and return her to her family. They would have been heroes, then.And there might have been NO phone hacking story.
In the end of course we have had probably the biggest clean-out in newspaper history . And that has to be a very good thing . The press is probably closer to smelling of roses than it has been for a long time .
What a pity if the politicians now grab the pruning shears and cut off its balls.