Press freedom and fairness should be enshrined in a British Bill of Rights
And here is the irony. Members of the political class have been attempting to tame the press for decades. (The Spectator came out against such interference back in 1834.) Yet only now, when many of the public prints lie on their deathbed, do politicians have a reasonable chance of success. The pressure group Hacked Off is desperate to establish political control, and it sees its chance. It has, in Mr Miliband, someone keen to play David to the Goliaths of Fleet Street. As one Cabinet member puts it: Miliband may very well push through the full Leveson regulation with Liberal Democrat support. There is a majority in Parliament for it. Technically, its quite possible: he can insert a clause into a Bill. But first, he needs enough fuss to be kicked up.
The BBC is certainly doing its best, and is treating his spat with the Daily Mail as if it were a national emergency. The debate about press regulation is impossible to understand in Britain without considering the BBCs interests. It loathes Sky, and was keen to stop Rupert Murdochs attempt to buy the broadcaster outright. Murdochs News Corporation had a $12 billion cash pile, and it fancied putting rocket boosters under Sky. Mark Thompson, then head of the BBC, signed a letter begging the government to stop Murdoch. The BBC broke its own rules and became an actor in the drama. Even worse, it never admitted the fact.
Like a medieval army that believes it has to keep conquering or face defeat, the state-funded BBC has started to occupy new terrain and is now a hegemon in providing the printed word. More people get their news from the 18-year-old BBC website than from any newspaper, unfair competition which is crushing not just local newspapers but national ones, too. The chief executive of the Guardian, Andrew Miller, blamed his newspapers short life expectancy on the oversupply of rivals including the Corporation. The two organs have the same outlook, but at least the newspaper cannot force anyone to buy it. The BBC uses the taxman, and 700 of us are now prosecuted each day for dodging the licence fee.
The quality of our national broadcaster is, of course, outstanding. But its selling point is that it is seen as moral, and more balanced than the newspapers so it has a vested interest in stories that present the press as being collectively guilty of a terrible misdemeanour. At times, it seems to delight in the discomfiture of the Daily Mail and, make no mistake, the two are now rivals, battling it out for digital readers. BBC Online even has its own version of the Mail Onlines famous sidebar of shame, with stories headed my Nazi blood and teenage exorcists.
The digital era is transforming the media, turning everyone against everyone else. Newspapers offer television now. Even The Spectator is producing audio podcasts, and the BBC with its massive financial firepower is taking on all-comers. Fleet Street is haemorrhaging power, creating the chance for politicians to strike. Most worryingly of all, a country that has prided itself on free speech for generations now sends police to arrest people for what they say on Twitter. The pace of change is staggering, and the ancient freedoms implicit since Miltons Areopagitica are proving useless in the digital age.
It is quite possible for Mr Miliband to pounce amid all the confusion. He could, in theory, amend the coming Lobbying Bill to vote through state regulation of the press. The newspapers would hate it, but he seems to enjoy fighting them. He could explain future unfavourable coverage as the sour grapes of Fleet Street bullies who have just met their match. And hed be cheered on by Tory MPs such as George Eustice, Camerons former press officer, who says that statutory regulation would prevent papers from printing what he regards as complete nonsense.
The solution is fairly simple. Chris Grayling, the Justice Secretary, is planning a British Bill of Rights that would be senior to any jurisdiction from Strasbourg. We have never, before, needed a constitution such basic principles as press freedom have been taken for granted. When the Scottish Parliament was granted powers to regulate television, the press was not mentioned: as recently as the late 1990s it was unthinkable that this old liberty would be extinguished. Yet next week, the Privy Council will consider government plans to do just that.
Mr Graylings Bill of Rights should incorporate a clause about freedom of speech and the press, ideally giving Britons the same protection as afforded to Americans by their First Amendment to the Constitution. It would help judges such as Lord Justice Leveson to understand the importance and definition of a free press. It would help politicians see that the Leveson proposals would, in the words of the New York Times, chill free speech and threaten the survival of small publishers and internet sites. And it would, moreover, put temptation out of Mr Milibands way.
Fraser Nelson is editor of 'The Spectator
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Press freedom and fairness should be enshrined in a British Bill of Rights