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.