British Press Report Brings Out the Speech Nannies

[Valin]

Via Meadia:

Walter Russell Mead

12/1/12

 

The British press stinks, or at least a lot of it does. Sleazy tabloids run wild with reporters hacking cell phones, getting stories under false pretenses and hounding relatives of soccer stars and other pop idols within an inch of their lives. Ghoulish over reporting of personal tragedies like missing children wreak havoc and ruin lives. Laws get broken, people get hurt. After revelations that reporters and editors at one of Britain’s biggest tabloids had gone even further than that, a typically British response was to convene a panel of the Great and Good to decide what to do.

 

The Leveson Report, released Thursday, is the result of a lengthy inquiry into the British press and urges “the establishment of a new system of press regulation that would be backed by parliamentary statute.” For a look at its key recommendations as summarized by the Guardian, go here.

 

The British left is screaming for parliamentary regulation of the press. Prime Minister Cameron says this would “cross the Rubicon”: let the politicians start regulating the press and the Ministry of Truth is not far away. He is basically right; while the Leveson report doesn’t call for censorship of content, it introduces the idea that an outside regulator (theoretically independent of government) should regulate the conduct of reporters. Such bodies accrete power over time; once the camel gets its nose in the tent, the takeover process begins.

 

 

(Snip)

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"Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience."

C. S. Lewis

[clearvision]

They already have some pretty stringent regulations on at least TV there. Evidently there is some sort of "truth" bureau for broadcasts.