chippingnortonjournal

Press regulation

So our three party leaders Cameron, Clegg and Miliband are arguing like petulant children over trying to shackle the press with Clegg and Miliband trying to force some sort of 'Levinson Law' through Parliament. While many may say it's a good thing but I say 'don't you want to know what's going on? The reality is like many laws passed it WILL be abused by those it will protect, MP's, Civil Servants, have you ever noticed how we seem to get 'government leaks' or 'cabinet leaks' but no one actually gets prosecuted unless one of the minions who believe we should know do it? Take for example the latest NHS whistleblowers story, with the government saying  whistleblowers should not be gagged and then in the process of passing laws preventing the press from releasing such stories then who are they going to call? Ghostbusters?

Haringey Council (Labour) tries to gag the press from naming it in the baby P affair to avoid further embarrassment or criticism.
Any new laws passed should be against illegal email and phone tapping (which I assume is illegal anyway?) preventing the press from releasing such information gained this way however, again it depends just exactly who does the phone tapping, take for example the case of Mick Philpot and his wife Mairead accused of murdering their six children, police have realised information saying they bugged the police van and the hotel bedroom in which they were staying to gain information  and guess who they released it too? The press, what makes it worse is they actually released the words they said, If a member of the jury repeated that, they would be held in contempt of court, talk about being guilty before proven innocent, again the police are pretty quick in organising press conferences when they need help such as the Madeline McCann disappearance,  later the McCann's objected to press intrusion particularly when they felt too much intrusion but never complained of the world wide coverage generated by the British press.  

Now the actor Hugh Grant, the figurehead for the Hacked Off campaign group is trying to use his muscle to influence the decision, again he and his ex Liz Hurley didn't mind of the amount of press coverage when it was to their benefit, perhaps he should be reminded of the actor who called the paparazzi scum only to find at a film premier ALL the paparazzi downed cameras and ignored him gaining no publicity for the film much to the annoyance of the film directors and producers, who quickly informed him he was employed to generate publicity for the  film, he was quickly made to apologise to the press for his comments.
Put quite simply if the press made it quite clear to the likes of Hugh Grant et al. they will never again be mentioned in the press for any reason whatever, then overnight  they will become persona non grata and no longer employable. I'm pretty sure they might not be so objective. Besides without the press we wouldn't have found out about Jimmy Savile would we, how's about that then?