Threats to press freedom — aren’t they more of a worry
in faraway places of which we know little?
Places like Poland,
where crowds protested last month against government proposals to restrict
parliamentary reporting. Or Turkey, where campaigners claim almost 150
reporters and writers have been detained in a government crackdown since last
year’s failed coup.
Surely not in Britain,
where we have enjoyed a press more or less free from state control for more
than 300 years. Free until now, it seems. For the UK press is facing a punitive
new law that could close down newspapers for telling the truth and freeze
investigative journalism.
Welcome to 2017 — or
should that be 1695? That was when crown licensing of the press finally ended
in Britain and it became legal to publish without state officials having to
approve every word.
For the first time since then,
Britain has a state-approved press regulator. It is a little-known body called
Impress, largely funded by Max Mosley, the former Formula One impresario and
vengeful tabloid foe, and supported by others with minimal love for the media.
Impress has been recognised as an official regulatory body under a suitably
medieval-sounding royal charter, agreed in 2013 at a late-night meeting between
the leaders of the UK’s main political parties and Hacked Off, a
celebrity-packed pressure group that campaigns against “cruel and unethical
treatment” by the press.
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