I was wrong - Press regulation is not the answer

The British press can be extremely unethical at times, from the Daily Mail’s race baiting to the News of the World hacking the phone of a missing schoolgirl. The American media, for comparison, experiences far fewer accusations of unethical behaviour, certainly none on the level of the phone hacking scandal. Yet if I were given a choice of having either the British press or the American media, I would definitely choose the British press. Why? Well the primary job of the press is to hold the government to account, it is supposed to seek out corruption within our democracy and expose any corruption or unethical behaviour that they find. If the press does not do this, then it is not doing its job! The British press, for all its faults, does a reasonable job of this, the American media does not. There is a reason why it was a British newspaper, namely the Guardian, that revealed the information of the American government’s spying operations leaked to it by Edward Snowden, and not an American publication.

The conviction of Andy Coulson, and acquittal of RebekahBrooks, for phone hacking has brought the issue of press regulation back into the nation’s mindset. I used to support some form of press regulation as I felt that the actions of the press were so egregious that they simply could not be ignored. I honestly believed that regulation was necessary! But I was wrong. As terrible as the British press is at times, it does its job. Ian Hislop summed it up perfectly in an episode of Have I Got News For You.

A free press is necessary for a fully functioning democracy, if you start regulating the press you jeopardise one of the core tenets of democracy. If you don’t have a free press, then you don’t have a functioning democracy.

What I am not saying is that if we have press regulation, then Britain is suddenly going to become North Korea. What I am saying is that by regulating the press you have a government that is less accountable to its citizens and that won’t represent you. This means that public opinion will have even less influence over government decisions. We have seen what happens when governments get too close to the journalists, and it is not something that we can allow as a country. As horrific as the British press can be at times, regulating it is not the right answer. 

Civil War Returns to Iraq

Civil War has returned to Iraq as the sectarian and ethnic conflict between Sunni Muslims, Shia Muslims, and the Kurds, takes a turn for the worse. The Jihadist organisation ISIL (Islamic State in Iraq andthe Levant)* has taken large portions of the north and west, including Iraq’s second city Mosul.

So far ISIL has encountered very little resistance from the Iraqi Army, when ISIL came to take the city of Mosul the Army fled so quickly that they left behind all of their equipment! This becomes even more shocking when you realise that the ISIL contingent had less than 1000 men andthe Iraqi Army had over 60,000! They ran away so fast that they left behind tanks and military jets! So why on earth did the Army run away when they outnumbered the enemy 60:1 and has massive technological superiority? The answer lies in the sectarian makeup of Iraq, and its institutions. The army, like the government, is mostly Shia, whilst Mosul is dominated by Sunni Muslims.

The soldiers had no interest in defending Mosul from a Sunni organisation like ISIL. They are not going to risk their lives ‘protecting’ people who at best, they don’t care about, or at worst they hate. That is why the fighting so far has produced fewer casualties than you might expect. The bloodbath will truly begin when ISIL attempts to take territory that is disputed or majority Shi’ite. This could come sooner than you think. ISIL is less than 50km from Baghdad and Baghdad is mostly Shi’ite. When the Battle for Baghdad starts you will not see the army fleeing, instead they will fight and thousands will die.

The ethnic/sectarian divisions of Iraq
source: The Economist

Another piece in this complex puzzle of Iraq are the Kurds. The Kurds are an ethnic group in the region that have been persecuted for a long time. Although they are Sunni, they are often thought of as being primarily Kurdish and secondarily Sunni. They form a majority in north eastern Iraq, and for the past several years have had some de facto independence. They have their own army, the Peshmarga, which has over 200,000 soldiers which is why ISIL has not tried to take Kurdish territory. In fact this has worked out well for the Kurds, so far, as the Iraqi Army flees the north, they have been able to capture more territory that was formerly in dispute, including the oil rich city of Kirkuk.

There is no easy solution to the chaos that has engulfed Iraq. What I currently favour is sending UN peacekeepers to Iraq to split the country into three new countries, Sunni Iraq, Shi’ite Iraq and Kurdistan. Obviously this is easier said than done, and will involve blood being spilt on all sides. I do believe that the partition of Iraq holds the best hope of achieving some form of peace and stability in the country.

*sometimes referred to as ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria)