Free speech issue

3 november 2012 ❘ £3.50

www.spectator.co.uk ❘ est. 1828

The fight for free speech

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Nick Cohen Hugh Grant Boris Johnson Nigel Lawson Dominic Lawson Fraser Nelson Alexander Chancellor

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THE FREE SPEECH ISSUE

Whose freedom? Whose press?

Everyone is a journalist now – which makes licensing of newspapers an obsolete idea NICK COHEN

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love for freedom of the press inspired Milton, Voltaire, Jefferson, Madison, Mill and Orwell. Ringing declarations of the right of citizens to read and write what they choose have run through constitutions and charters of liberties. Modern Britain being the way it is, however, the lofty rhetoric of the past has sunk to debates about celebs and breasts. Specifically, the breasts on page three of The Sun, and the tits who publish them.

Evan Harris, tribune of the Hacked Off campaign, makes a plausible argument that an effective press regulator could ban page three girls. After Lord Justice Leveson hears all the evidence of mass wrongdoing by journalists, he is likely to recommend a media authority that would treat journalists as if they were professionals akin to doctors or lawyers. Once that step has been taken, Harris, a former Liberal Democrat MP, could say that no employer allows boorish men to stick up pictures of naked women in the workplace. They demean and intimidate female colleagues. But the Sun still prints pictures ‘it would never put on the walls of its own newsroom’. Why would a reputable regulator overseeing journalists committed to new professional standards allow that?

The battles around Leveson are likely to turn vicious. Fleet Street knows how much it may lose, and knows that it has no one to blame but itself. Not a single hacking story the Leveson inquiry has told us about was in the public interest. Journalists and their managers had the powers of a secret police force to monitor private conversations. All they did was hack the phones of celebrities and the victims of crime. They cannot produce in their defence one example of illegal surveillance being used to expose an abuse of power or corruption of government.

It is not even as if everyone demanding regulation is an authoritarian. The academics around the Hacked Off campaign are in my experience products of late-20th-century leftism. Their only enemy is corporate power, and they can always find reasons to be somewhere else when basic liberties need defending. Nor do I see why the freedoms of this country should be torn up because Hacked Off’s star witness Max Mosley believes that if a gentleman wishes to hire whores by the 14

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half-dozen to beat his bottom to a pulp, it is nobody’s business but his own. But Evan Harris could not be more different. He is one of the most impressive and principled politicians I know: and a friend and comrade in the campaign for libel reform. Meanwhile Brian Cathcart, the driving force behind

Obscure blogs can receive huge audiences if links and search engines direct readers to a sensational post Hacked Off, was a serious journalist before he became an academic, and published a fine investigation into the deaths of soldiers at the Deepcut barracks.

In other words, if you want to take them on, you need to do better than reproduce the self-interested snarls of wounded Fleet Street editors. You make a start when you grasp that journalism has never been and cannot be a profession. Freedom of the press is the freedom of all citizens to write and broadcast. Once that freedom was as

risible as the old joke that capitalism meant that everyone was free to book a room at the Ritz. In theory, everyone had the right to enjoy the freedom to publish. In practice, only the employees of public or private media corporations could exercise it.

Journalism was not a profession but it was a kind of guild. If the Leveson inquiry had happened 30 years ago, it could have proposed tighter regulation of the journalists’ club. Now laws on the press affect everyone who blogs, tweets and posts. It is only a slight exaggeration to say that we are all journalists now.

Leveson knows it. And the contortions of those who hope for statutory regulation suggest that they know it too. They can no longer define a ‘newspaper’. Is it an established title or is it every news site and blog published in Britain? They try to escape modernity by using advertising and readership ‘thresholds’ to determine which sites should fall under the ambit of the new regulator and which should not. They fail to

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understand that the most obscure blogs can receive huge audiences if links and search engines direct readers to a sensational post.

In desperation, they say that newspapers can do more harm than isolated bloggers or Tweeters. This is not true either. Malicious posts on local sites concern the clients of libel lawyers as much as the writing in the national press.

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s with legitimate constraints on free speech, so with illegitimate suppression. Case after case now shows that the battle against censorship has moved online. The Crown Prosecution Service’s persecution of Paul Chambers for joking about blowing up an airport and the Trafford Housing Trust’s decision to punish a Christian employee for voicing his opposition to gay marriage on Facebook are the new free-speech battles for the 21st century.

I do not wish to pre-empt his lordship, but Leveson seems to want to have an exclusive form of control for kite-marked approved newspapers which are covered by his new regulator. Newspapers that refuse to join — and Private Eye ­­may be one — and everyone else who writes on the web will continue to suffer the punitive costs of our archaic libel laws.

This strikes me as not only contrary to natural justice but as an anachronism in itself. The arrival of the web demands wholesale legal reform. We need cheap means to resolve disputes — and if that means cutting costs by substituting the continental system of inquisitorial magistrates for our ferociously expensive adversarial system in free speech cases, so be it. We need independent judges to hear cases rather than regulators who are susceptible to political pressure.

Above all, we need consistency. If Hacked Off wants to ban page three, it should be forced to make the argument for banning all images of naked women everywhere.

In their hearts everyone around Leveson knows this. The peeping toms who bugged celebrities are not in trouble because they broke professional codes and moral guidelines — though they did. They are in trouble because they broke the law of the land, which applies to everyone.

At a time when all can publish, we need one law for all. Anything else will seem as out of date as hot metal presses.

What the papers won’t say Kirsty Walker

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he chilling effects of Lord Leveson are already being felt in every newsroom in the country — and it is the rich, powerful and influential who are reaping the benefits. I know this because after 17 years working in national newspapers, the last seven of which I spent on the Daily Mail, I have just walked away from a job I loved. The decision — one of the hardest of my life — was driven partly by a desire to spend more time with my young family. But a major factor was the menacing post-Leveson culture in which journalists are already forced to operate.

Few journalists will talk about it, but the rules of the game have changed. If you inquire about certain establishment figures or MPs, they make use of the tools they possess to intimidate you. Our political elite are using these tools all the time and appear worringly confident that the £5.6 million Leveson inquiry will hand them even more.

There is a reason why international libel lawyers refer to London as a ‘town named sue’.

It’s hard for me to detail examples without running the risk of landing The Spectator in court: I had a good instance of a powerful person suppressing unpleasant information about himself from the public, but lawyers advised me that it would be too risky too print, since the person in question is known to be so litigious.

That’s how it works. Take, though, the case of Chris Huhne’s partner, Carina Trimingham, who took the Daily Mail to court for harassment because the paper had repeatedly referred to her as a bisexual — which, by the way, she is. She lost her case.

I was lucky to work for a newspaper with the time and money to fight such cases: not all journalists are so lucky. Britain has become a place where the rich, famous and well-connected can take newspapers to court (with the help of no-win, no-fee lawyers) for writing the truth.

Before the Leveson inquiry, I had received less than a dozen PCC

complaints in my career and never had one upheld. But when I left, complaints were coming in at a rate of at least one a month. All required mini-investigations. Even foreign dictatorships know how to frighten Fleet Street. The last complaint I was asked to deal with was from a dictator, the King of Bahrain, who didn’t like the way I referred to criticism of his regime following the deaths of 40 people in antigovernment protests.

Like 99.99 per cent of British journalists, I never hacked a phone or bribed a public official. During my long career in the House of Commons, I tried my utmost to be fair. If a story didn’t quite stack up, I would abandon it. A small

There is a reason why international libel lawyers refer to London as ‘a town called sue’ handful of journalists did hire private investigators to do some horrific things, but there are laws in this country to deal with them.

How do we know that Lord Leveson’s report will encourage the rich, the powerful, the venal and the pompous to intimidate journalists and frighten papers into not covering stories? Because the prospect of it has done so already. How do we know that an elite will attempt to decide what it is appropriate for the rest of us to read about over our cornflakes? Because Leveson is already doing exactly that. This is the judge who read a 200-word article in the Times about how The Thick of It was planning to satirise him in one episode — and promptly asked the editor of that paper whether it was ‘appropriate’ for him to run the piece. It is all too easy to guess what a judge with such an attitude to newspapers will do for press freedom.

Kirsty Walker is an associate director at iNHouse Communications.

‘He’s got swine fever.’ the spectator | 3 november 2012 | www.spectator.co.uk

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THE FREE SPEECH ISSUE

All together now Spectator editors and writers past and present unite against statutory press regulation

more important than our own commercial interests. It is not as if we act beyond legal constraint. We have the toughest libel laws in the developed world, available not just to the wealthy but, since the development of contingency fees, to anyone with a good case. The courts themselves may not be held in contempt — and newspapers in breach of that requirement have rightly faced heavy fines.

There is also a fast-developing law of privacy, emanating from the Human Rights Act. Most pertinently, in the case of phone hacking — which precipitated the Leveson inquiry — a number of journalists now face the prospect, if found guilty, of imprisonment, under the law as it stands. Given that it was newspapers that uncovered those misdeeds, it would be a bitter irony if statutory regulation were to be the monument to their efforts.

Fraser Nelson Editor, The Spectator A SIMPLE CHOICE

British politicians have long dreamt of regulating the press, but have always been hampered by the basic point that the press isn’t theirs to regulate. Only now, with the industry on its knees, do the enemies of press freedom feel able to strike. Their hope is to appoint a press watchdog who would stand well back at first, but be able to tighten the screws if need be. The less scrupulous MPs believe that from that moment on, power will shift. They will be able to speak softly to journalists, while carrying a very big stick.

I had a taste of this last month when a senior MP telephoned me asking me to discipline a Spectator writer who had displeased him on Twitter. It was a preposterous suggestion, but he was limbering up for a post-Leveson era in which the press will have to take note of what people like him think. Soon, such MPs may have control of a regulatory device that can be ratcheted up, inflicting further pain on newspapers already fighting for survival.

David Cameron set up the Leveson inquiry in a panic. Having run up a £5.6 million bill, he will face understandable pressure to act. Word is that he desperately doesn’t want to choose between Leveson and a free press, and is looking for a third way. But this time, none exists.

Mayor of London Spectator editor 1999-2005

Chancellor of the Exchequer 1983-1989 Spectator editor 1966-1970 PROTECTING THE PUBLIC

Press freedom is of the first importance, so I oppose statutory regulation of the press. It can all too easily inhibit the press in its essential task of scrutinising and challenging authority in all its forms. But the matter does not rest there. The public needs to be protected from abuse of press freedom in two ways. The first is the law of libel, which we have, although whether it is precisely right as it stands is another matter. The second is privacy legislation, which we do not have, and badly need.

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Peter Jones Spectator ‘Ancient and ‘Modern’ columnist

FIGHTING CORRUPTION

Government in this country is as clean of financial corruption as anywhere in the world.

That is largely thanks to a free and inquisitive media. To rinse the gutters of public life you need a gutter press.

Dominic Lawson Spectator editor 1990-1995 Sunday Telegraph editor 1995-2005 THE BIRTHRIGHT OF BRITONS

Nigel Lawson

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Boris Johnson

If Lord Justice Leveson were to recommend some form of licensing of journalists, it should only be necessary to invoke the words of John Wilkes, from his peroration two-and-a-half centuries ago printed in The North Briton: ‘The liberty of the press is the birthright of a Briton, and is justly esteemed the firmest bulwark of the liberties of this country.’ As Leveson’s colleague Lord Chief Justice Judge observed a year ago, the significance of that phrase was not that it upheld the liberty of the press, but that ‘the liberty of the press is the birthright of every citizen, that is, the community as the whole’. So while it may be selfserving of our trade to oppose regulation and invigilation by a government-appointed regulator, we are defending something infinitely

AS TACITUS WOULD SAY…

When the Roman historian Tacitus mused on life under the tyrannical emperor Domitian, he produced a reflection of which Orwell would have been proud (Agricola, 2). Having described how Domitian set out to burn books and banish free thought, he concluded: ‘Rome of old explored the limits of freedom, but we the depths of slavery, robbed even of the exchange of ideas because of informers.

We would have lost memory itself as well as our tongues, had it been as easy to forget as it was to remain silent.’ ’Ere! That Tacitus. Not bad.

James Forsyth Political editor, The Spectator THE INSTINCT TO REGULATE

Too often in Britain we think that the answer to any problem is more law and regulation.

But nearly every issue that Lord Justice Leveson and his inquiry have been examining is already covered by the law: phone hacking is illegal, there are strict rules regarding prejudging someone’s guilt before trial and printing false attacks on people’s character

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and reputation is libellous. What is needed is not a new law setting up a new regulator but better application of the existing law. We should also be wary of anything that offers politicians power over the press. ‘Statutory underpinning’ would be the thin end of the wedge.

The Leveson inquiry was set up because David Cameron needed to demonstrate that he was taking the whole issue of phone hacking seriously despite his links to several of those caught up in the scandal. It might have been — as many in No. 10 and the Cabinet declare privately — a mistake to set up the inquiry in the first place. But it would be a far greater error for him to accept uncritically its recommendations.

Matthew Parris

Spectator columnist MP for West Derbyshire 1979-1986

The pressure of pre-notification

My greatest worry is about pre-notification: clearance in advance. Once (or if) there exists a body with semi-statutory authority to determine what reports, and what means and lines of inquiry, are ‘in the public interest’, pressure will grow on editors to consult the body before publication. Where journalists are contemplating subterfuge in order to stand up a story, the pressure will be to consult before even chasing the story. Otherwise, should complaints be made after publication, it will seem only reasonable to point out to the editor that a body capable of defining the public interest exists, and to ask why he didn’t take the precaution of consulting it in advance.

The editor who consulted his own judgment alone and failed to get clearance will appear careless, or worse. Failure to get clearance will aggravate the offence, if offence is found. Thus we will be led by a series of small logical steps, each of which seems only reasonable, to a situation in which a reputable editor must get clearance from an official body before pursuing any story that he ought to have known might give rise to a complaint.

James Delingpole

Spectator columnist and TV critic

Less Law, not more

Leveson was just a kangaroo court set up by the BBC and the Guardian on behalf of the left-liberal establishment in order to attack free speech, free markets and, most especially, Rupert Murdoch. Its conclusions will certainly be wrong-headed, dangerous and counterproductive. What we need is more press freedom, not less. Our libel laws are the reason people like Jimmy Savile, corrupt politi-

cians and crooked businessmen get away with it. The PCC — in my experience — is merely a tool used by authoritarian, mendacious bullies with something to hide to harass honest journalists trying to do their job. Any new regulation which doesn’t embrace the internet will be worthless. (How does it help to gag the tabloids if you can read it all online?) And any new regulation which does embrace the internet will be terrifying, evil, wrong — and conducive to totalitarianism.

Dot Wordsworth Spectator ‘Mind your language’ columnist

Taki

milton was right

I do not like to side with that horrible man John Milton, but he was right when he said: ‘If we think to regulat Printing, thereby to rectifie manners, we must regulat all recreations and pastimes, all that is delightful to man.’ He meant this as a reductio ad absurdum, but I fear that bossy politicians, complacently regarding their success in controlling cigarettes and whisky and what names we call each other in the street, will eagerly take up the apodosis of Milton’s conditional proposal too.

the common good

Alexander Chancellor

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Spectator editor 1975-1984

Spectator ‘High life’ columnist

Now that I’m in love with Lindsay Lohan, I should be in favour of regulation of the press in view of what the tabloids have done to the future Mrs Taki. Nevertheless I am against it.

With regulation the crooks would run wild in most European parliaments, including Britain, not to mention Greece, Romania and Bulgaria. Jimmy Savile types ditto. So my fiancée gets a raw deal, but the majority benefits. One more sacrifice by the poor little Greek boy for the common good.

Rory Sutherland

Spectator ‘Wiki Man’ columnist

the press is already tame

The very idea of statutory press regulation is antithetical to the idea of press freedom.

Imagine it ever being proposed in the United States! Yet there is a strong wind behind it in this country, whipped up almost entirely by celebrities eager to keep their names out of the newspapers except on their own terms.

You won’t find many ordinary people baying for it.

Journalists should, like everybody else, be subjected to the laws of the land, and they are. The law that forbids phone hacking has been invoked with dramatic consequences against Rupert Murdoch’s newspapers.

The article of the European Convention of Human Rights which says that ‘everyone has the right to respect for his private and family life, his home and his correspondence’ was incorporated into British law by the Human Rights Act of 1998. And Britain’s libel laws are so notoriously restrictive that they are now being reformed to make them weaker.

Far from needing more regulation, the press is already more than adequately tamed.

The libel laws, successfully used by such miscreants as Robert Maxwell, Jeffrey Archer and Lance Armstrong to protect themselves from exposure, may well have played a part

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in Fleet Street’s shameful failure ever to reveal the truth about Jimmy Savile. If its enemies had their way, the press might well not even have had the gumption to expose the phone-hacking scandal, as the Guardian did, or, as the Daily Telegraph did, the MPs’ expenses scandal.

Not only is a statutory regulator inherently undesirable, it is hard to imagine how it could operate in the diverse and rumbustious world of the print media. And the press is already cringing; the last thing it needs is to be further cowed.

Remember Gyges

Which used car would you prefer to buy? One sold by a man who has lived in your street for 15 years and who drinks in your local pub?

Or an apparently identical car sold by a man called ‘Dave’ living a hundred miles away?

I’d buy the first. The former seller has rather more reputation at stake. He is hence a little less likely to pack the gearbox with sawdust, conscious that he may have to face you in the pub, and that word of his deception can reach the ears of everyone he knows.

This area of economics, which might be called ‘reputational game theory’, deserves more study. Another name for it might be ‘Gygeology’, after Gyges, the original Teflon Man, mentioned in Plato’s Republic. As a young shepherd, Gyges found a magic ring which made its wearer invisible. Suddenly immune from reputational damage, the shameless Gyges uses the ring to seduce a queen, murder a king and commit various crimes, later becoming King of Lydia and UK Prime Minister, 1997-2007.

As Plato, TripAdvisor and eBay all show, there can be little trust without the threat of shame. A free press is essential to business and democracy. I do not want to be governed by Gyges.

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THE FREE SPEECH ISSUE

Leveson and Jimmy Savile Did the press inquiry scare newspapers away from a major story?

MILES GOSLETT

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ast December I received a telephone call concerning Jimmy Savile’s apparent sexual abuse of underage girls in the 1970s. The details I heard were pretty chilling, but the negative reaction when I tried (unsuccessfully) to report the claims in the national press was equally troubling. There is every indication that the Leveson inquiry into press standards was to blame.

My source said that a Newsnight investigation into Savile’s activities had been shelved by the BBC in mysterious circumstances and encouraged me to find out more. I learnt that Newsnight had heard that Savile and two other celebrities, both still alive, had abused many different girls on BBC premises and in the Surrey countryside, when Savile visited an all-girls approved school called Duncroft.

Newsnight also discovered that Savile had been questioned over sex crimes by Surrey police in 2007.

The claims had been corroborated several times over by former Duncroft pupils; two had even waived their anonymity to talk in front of the cameras about their experiences. By any standards Newsnight’s investigation was worthy of national attention, but the programme’s editor, Peter Rippon, had killed the story. Why? One theory I heard was that it clashed with tribute programmes to Savile scheduled for Christmas week.

On 21 December the BBC press office confirmed to me that Newsnight had undertaken a Savile investigation. Without commenting on details, they said it had been axed for editorial reasons. With this confirmation, I assumed the story would sail into any newspaper. I couldn’t have been more wrong.

Over two weeks I contacted six national news desks. One after another rejected the idea. I consistently suggested that it would not be necessary for anyone to accuse Savile outright of abusing children, simply to report that Newsnight had jettisoned its exposé despite significant-seeming findings, of which I knew quite a bit. Newsnight’s groundwork could then be developed, or perhaps other victims would come forward.

Yet it was futile. Some papers told me that because Savile had been dead less than two months the story was ‘in bad taste’, whatever its provenance. Others said that if the police hadn’t prosecuted Savile in his lifetime, it wouldn’t be worth pursuing him now. And a couple of news desks judged that

material like this was ‘best avoided’ for the time being.

I assumed that they were referring to the time of year — Christmas — but it was the seventh and final paper I contacted that gave what I now believe to be the real reason I was dismissed by all seven. The senior executive I spoke to admitted that because his editor was about to appear in front of Lord Leveson’s inquiry into press ethics, then at its height, it would be unwise to run the piece. Being seen to be behaving responsibly was vital if the press was to avoid statutory regulation. Running a provocative story about Savile, then

The story was a bad idea in case it showed the industry in an unflattering light. Its public interest was secondary still considered a saintlike figure, might therefore be a mistake.

Having the story rejected by the national press seemed more alarming than the initial call I had taken about Newsnight’s shelved investigation. Here was the deputy editor of a national title telling me that publishing a controversial article would be a bad idea in case it showed his editor and the wider industry in an unflattering light. The story’s public interest was of secondary importance.

As a freelance journalist I was powerless to argue. But as I reflected over Christmas that the BBC tribute programmes praising Savile were being broadcast by the very organisation which had been critically investigating him a few weeks earlier, it was remarkable to me that much of the press was totally uninterested in this fact. A key opportunity for the press to hold the BBC to account — perhaps even to save the corporation from the trouble in which it now finds itself — had been missed.

‘Thank you for getting away from it all in this wild and remote spot. CCTV is in operation…’

the spectator | 3 november 2012 | www.spectator.co.uk

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Last April I made a freedom of information request to the BBC asking for any records of written communications or meetings among four BBC executives, including the then director-general Mark Thompson, concerning the Newsnight investigation and allegations that Savile had molested underage girls on BBC premises in the 1970s.

On 18 May the request was denied so I rang Mr Thompson’s office and told an aide, Jessica Cecil, that I wanted to talk to him about the request and also about claims made to Newsnight that girls were abused on BBC premises by Jimmy Savile in the 1970s. Ms Cecil referred me to the BBC press office.

Last week she admitted that she did not pass on the details of my call to Mr Thompson.

Instead, she told the BBC director of communications, Paul Mylrea. He did not pass word of my call to Mr Thompson either.

Eventually only ITV was prepared to confront this difficult issue, with a Savile exposé that triggered the current storm. Perhaps in retrospect the conclusion will be drawn that newspapers, lacking in confidence because of the Leveson inquiry, had to wait for someone else to fire the starting gun before they could fully investigate a story whose main ingredients they had known for months.

Several commentators have argued that, just as the BBC failed in its duty to broadcast the results of Newsnight’s six-week inquiry, so some newspapers failed for decades in theirs to investigate rumours about Savile. This criticism may be valid, though it seems Savile’s powerful position and aggressive legal stance whenever challenged were central factors in his escaping justice. The possibility that he blackmailed others also cannot be ruled out.

However, with hindsight it seems implausible that newspapers wouldn’t have been interested in this material. So much work had already been done. The Leveson inquiry, and its perceived threat to a bruised industry, prevented at least one national newspaper from reporting a story which its editor may now regret he did not run. If other papers had the same reason, they did not admit it, but I now believe that it must have been the primary factor which held them back.

The irony is that Lord Leveson is focused almost solely on the press, whose commercial fortunes are diminishing all of the time.

The BBC, with its guaranteed income of £3.5 billion a year, has largely avoided this televised inquiry. And yet the BBC, like many newspapers, made use of private detectives, spending £310,000 on them over 230 separate occasions in six years. Perhaps if the BBC had been included fully in the Leveson inquiry, newspapers would have felt differently about reporting on what must rank as the most serious scandal in its history.

With the story rejected by the mainstream press, it was Richard Ingrams, the 75-year-old editor of the Oldie, who felt able to run the piece. He commissioned me without hesitation and the story was published in February.

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THE FREE SPEECH ISSUE

What I’m fighting for Better newspaper regulation isn’t just a cause for lefties and celebrities. Here’s why HUGH GRANT

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’m often asked why I keep banging on about the press. Am I a lefty? I’m not.

I’m not a righty either. I drift. (And in terms of impartiality, by the way, the same goes for Hacked Off – as a campaign group we are determinedly hermaphrodite.)

Am I a muzzler? I really don’t think so.

I recoil from the dead hand of the state. I grind my teeth when they swipe my passport at UK immigration.

Do I want to be a moral arbiter? Hardly. Rupert Murdoch recently called me a scumbag. Harsh, but I see where he’s coming from.

So am I a whingeing celeb?

No, in that it really isn’t all about getting caught with my trousers down in 1995. That was a matter of public record, so how could it not be reported? I won’t pretend the press storm was fun, but it was inevitable. And I accept that in my job you often get more attention that you might like.

No also in the sense that this isn’t about trying to get better coverage for myself. If that were my aim, would I really be going toe to toe with British tabloids? They will never forgive me, whatever the outcome.

And no in that it certainly isn’t a craving for attention. I trudge on to Newsnight or Question Time like Saddam to the scaffold.

We beg them to use our professors or our lawyers, but they won’t.

But yes, in one sense it is personal. Anyone who finds their phone has been hacked or their flat broken into on the orders of a newspaper; or has had their elderly father with a heart condition repeatedly brought down three flights of stairs to talk to doorstepping reporters, despite polite requests to leave him alone; or has witnessed the children of their (non-showbiz) girlfriend crying with fear in the back of her car as she is chased by photographers; or has seen the press print intimate details from the medical records of the mother of their child without her permission — any normal person in these situations would be angry. You then have a choice. You lie down and take it or you reach for your cricket bat. You try to protect.

And that’s really what I feel about the country. I’ve lived here for 52 years, and 20

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although to a greater or lesser extent it’s always been something of a mess, I’m afraid I think God is indeed an Englishman (or Scot, or Ulsterman or even Welsh). We queue, we get the joke, we’re fundamentally decent and we don’t bully. In fact, we have a history of standing up to bullies.

Which is why I’m so sad about what has happened to our newspaper industry. The British press has always been and always should be (and I would leap into Paul Dacre’s ditch to defend these things) impertinent, spiky, nosey and unfawning to power or success or wealth. They have always pissed people off, as they should.

The British press has always been and always should be impertinent, spiky, nosey and unfawning But I believe they used to be fundamentally decent. Abducted teenagers, victims of terrorism and bereaved families of servicemen didn’t have their phones hacked for profit.

Innocent citizens were not dubbed murderers on front pages while the press regulator did nothing. Policemen, prison officers, NHS staff were not bribed.

That has been happening lately. And abuses are still going on, despite Leveson.

Ask the Bowles family, who this year lost their 11-year-old son in a coach crash in Switzerland. Despite pleas for privacy, their home was besieged, photographs of the boy were lifted from the school trip website without permission and printed in a national newspaper alongside long-lens pictures of his nine-year-old sister as she prepared to lay flowers at the crash site.

‘You know you asked me to try to talk about my feelings more? Well, we lost 3-0 today and I’m totally gutted.’

I’m not just sad. I’m embarrassed. I hate trying to explain these things to friends from abroad and I hate describing the fear of our politicians — a fear both psephological and personal — in the face of a ruthless press lobby. And I hate saying that for the same reason it is possible nothing will change even now.

So that’s why I’m banging on. And that’s why I’m so worried that we’re about to miss our one chance in a generation to put things right.

We don’t know what Leveson will recommend. But let’s assume he won’t back yet another helping of self-regulation (the so-called Hunt/Black plan). Let’s say he proposes a new regulator, independent both of the industry and of government, and with the minimum statutory underpinning to make it effective. According to a recent YouGov poll, that would be supported by 77 per cent of the UK population. Many of the national newspapers, on the other hand, say it will be the end of freedom of the press.

But will it really?

It’s similar to how the judiciary, lawyers and doctors are regulated in this country. And none wanted to be regulated, but they’re fine with it now. In terms of regulation it would be nothing in comparison to how Ofcom or the BBC Trust regulate the broadcasting industries, and it’s hard to find a broadcast journalist who complains of being chilled or constrained.

The Finns have a 2003 law giving people a right of reply and giving publications a duty to correct. It also makes publications nominate one person as the ‘responsible editor’ at any time, so that ‘I was on holiday’ is never an excuse. How muzzling have these measures been? On the World Press Freedom Index, Finland has come top in eight of the last ten years.

What I (and Hacked Off) campaign for is only this: that the press should obey the law and comply consistently with a fair and decent code of practice. Only that. If we detected even a bat’s squeak of genuine threat to public interest journalism we would pack it in. In fact, we also campaign for public interest defences in law for journalists in libel, bribery and other cases. We want more investigative journalism, not less.

We want journalists to be free to speak their minds, unconstrained by their corporate masters. That’s why we share platforms with the NUJ. So we’re not muzzlers. We’re not lefties.

And we’re not the wicked Goliath of the establishment taking on the plucky David of the press. It’s the other way round. They are the Establishment. They have effectively run the country for the past 40 years. They are Goliath. We need help.

Help.

This article is based on a speech given by the author to the Tory Reform Group.

the spectator | 3 november 2012 | www.spectator.co.uk

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