Regulating the press?

Lord Norton

My views on press regulation are encapsulated in a letter to The Daily Telegraph, signed by over eighty parliamentarians.   I am one of the signatories.  You can see the details here.  I am wary of state regulation and very much take the view that the problem at the moment is not so much the absence of legislation as a failure to enforce existing law.

14 comments for “Regulating the press?

  1. maurde elwes
    28/11/2012 at 10:03 am

    Regulations of the media is the worst possible move this government could make with respect to the right to freedom of speech, freedom of opinion, and any other freedoms we should have in this matter.

    What is wrong is the lack of enforcement of those who are libel prone and those who write knowing they are being less than honest, and those who perform acts of criminality = hacking. As you so cleverly expose, there are plenty of laws which already cover muc of this abuse of power.

    To subjugate or silence our press, more than they already are, for the sake of those who want fame or position, without the fear of exposure of the sordid aspects of their lives, is a gross miscarriage of natural justice.

    And lets face it, only those in positions of power and celebrity are pushing for this measure in order to silence those in the know. Except pordinary people like the Dowler family and others treated so badly and criminally, which should be dealt with automatically, speedily and with no cost to their purse for redress in the courts.

    If the press or media go outside the boundaries of the present laws and continue as they have on occassion then fines should be so painful it takes them out of business.

  2. Dave H
    28/11/2012 at 11:11 am

    If a government attempt to take control of the media, it means we need a new government.

    Far better to make it easier for individuals to pursue bits of the media if they’ve got something wrong, although even there it needs a balance between encouraging the media to get it right and aggressive use of the redress procedure in an attempt to discourage publication.

    • maude elwes
      28/11/2012 at 7:53 pm

      Then, of course, we must remember, could this all be a conspiracy to take more control of what we see and hear under the auspices of ‘protection’ for us all.

      A little reminder.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3eHjy-Ameo

      • Lord Blagger
        29/11/2012 at 12:16 pm

        Quite. Other people might be harmed.

        However those exercising the control are intellectually superior and don’t need the controls.

        This time its different.

        You either cut the net off completely, or people will get the information.

        What’s going to happen is that the cost of doing business as a newspaper is going to rocket. They aren’t on good margins, hence things like the Guaradian’s tax dodging.

        So its quite likely that the response is going to push some of them over the edge. Just look at the decline circulation numbers.

        http://chiefio.wordpress.com/2012/11/29/entitlement-death-spiral-begins-in-california/

        Is quite a good article that illustrates the current game. Some as the tradegy of the commons.

        —————
        One was California. They also had New Mexico, New York, Ohio, Illinois, and a few others. One on the list is Hawaii, you know, the State with the model “cover everyone” health plan? The basic metric was a composite of the “Makers vs Takers” ratio (if more Takers than Makers) and the debt rating (too much debt to service drives the rating down).
        —————

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9707029/Two-thirds-of-millionaires-left-Britain-to-avoid-50p-tax-rate.html

        Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.

        ===============

        Ho hum, just as predicted. If you abuse people paying the money, label them as scum etc, they will get the message. That applies to the EU wanting UK cash, just as much as people in the UK wanting other people’s money, not providing them with services etc. Google and the rich have got the message.

        Watch too as the banking regulation hits, and the banks either move, or just stop doing that sort of business. Tax revenues will fall off. Ask the muppets what cuts they will make to compensate, and they haven’t a clue. The tooth fairy will be along.

        • maude elwes
          01/12/2012 at 8:54 am

          Blagger, you really have to stop absorbing the idiocy rich men tell you about their tax problems.

          They don’t have tax problems. Fifty % of tax does not affect those who take their money off shore. That is bull.

          And so what is left is the middle classes. And how many of them really leave this country because of their tax situation. They leave the country because of its bizarre control over our everyday lives. Which has grown under the left wing political correctness game we have been sucked into.

          The rich never ever pay 50% of their earnings, not even close to that. Lucky if you get from them 17%. And you may be aware that way back in the 50’s and 60’s they paid 60% and even 90%. It did not create flight or disaster. Those who earned rock star money did exactly what they do today, took it off shore. And how many of them are there? You could count them on your fingers. And more, they should be paying their full amount of tax regardless. The once idea that they only had a small window of earning ability has been shown to be a fallacy hasn’t it? Mick and Keef still, Jumping Jack Flash, at almost seventy the other night. You are being conned by your own fear. Which of course the propaganda is designed to do.

          Wake up and smell the roses.

          • Lord Blagger
            02/12/2012 at 4:22 pm

            They don’t have tax problems. Fifty % of tax does not affect those who take their money off shore. That is bull.

            =============

            http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2106951/High-earning-1-pay-income-tax.html

            The highest-earning 1 per cent of Britons pay almost 30 per cent of all income taxes, according to research.
            The 308,000 on the 50p top rate – who earn more than £150,000 – pay £47billion a year to the Treasury.
            Since 2000, the share of tax paid by the highest earners has risen from 22.2 to 27.7 per cent.

            Almost two-thirds of the country’s million-pound earners disappeared from Britain after the introduction of the 50p top rate of tax, figures have disclosed.

            http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/9707029/Two-thirds-of-millionaires-left-Britain-to-avoid-50p-tax-rate.html

            ————–

            So yeah, they aren’t paying tax. They have moved their money out. Why be milked? They’ve been listen to the message you’ve been pedling, and others like you. They have earned the money and are scum. They haven’t made a noise. They’ve left.

            That means I’m going to be screwed over. As one of the middle class, I’m going to be screwed because people like you want to make the political point and engage in class warfare.

            As for how many can leave? Luckly I’m one who has that choice. I don’t want to make it with elderly parents. However, I suspect at some point, I’m going to be pushed to work else where (as I have done in the past).

            So wake up. Why is the government making such a fuss about Amazon etc. It’s because they are desperate. That’s why Osbourne is going to hit those saving for a pension. Forces the tax to be paid twice. Once on savings, then on your retirement income. It also brings the cash flow forward.

            As for Mick, it’s all offshore in companies.

  3. 28/11/2012 at 8:45 pm

    Lord Norton,

    The complex truth is that there must be evolution in the relations of law, press and technology. However, it is all the more commendable that you and your co-signatories are standing up for a free press. Few things are more vital to the preservation of a workable participatory and constitutional government. Such a governance is basic to the function of much of what is best in British society.

  4. MilesJSD
    28/11/2012 at 8:57 pm

    The media has become in itself a Terminal-Brain-Disease,
    peddling scandal, rabble-rousing, and endless strings of falsehoods and rootless-phantasmagorias.

    The remedy is compulsory-scrutiny and logical-assessment of everything it “freely” publishes;
    just as the cigaratte packet must clearly state “Smoking Is Dangerous To Health & Can Kill”

    The human need & right to “Freedom from Exploitation” must be accompanied by Truthful-commentary.

    That is the media-regulation that is primarily essential to Healthy, Holistic and Sustainworthy Human Development, as a worldwide generic right and necessity as well as for the ‘rescue’ of the British People from stultifying excesses of false-argument and repeatedly altered and undermined public and individual mindfulness.

  5. Rhodri Mawr
    29/11/2012 at 3:07 pm

    I don’t know about “mrauders” or “Guaradians”
    above but in the early days of the broadsheets
    in which James Howell Esq (historiographer Royal 1661-66)was involved, you had constantly to pretend to be in prison for debt (whilst still writing and publishing vigorously) so as not to incur the wrath of aristocratic power mongers, intent on silencing all the opinion except that which they approved of.

    The state does of course silence a good deal of comment in the modern day,by means of the BBC’s propaganda machine but at least it is the state doing it, and not powerful individuals.

    Other public Corporations may also prevent adverse comment by the press with the power of lobbying, and back handers, but if they do, we may at least send our copy to Paris or NY to be published there instead.

    Public Corporations regrettably are also able to control thought worldwide (Julian Assange/MacAfee), but the cost to deal with an individual’s literary and anarchic comments may outweigh the damage done by the power of his pen.

    In deed the powers of corporations to control thought, are probably a good deal greater than those of the representatives of
    the democratic state.

    The power to control unlawful content on the worldwide web at the level of the “individual” nation state must itself be a complex one.

  6. Nazma FOURRE
    29/11/2012 at 10:29 pm

    Dear Lord Norton,
    The press makes the politics and is a continuous encyclopedia for news to be passed from parliament to citizens.The freedom of speech so far it is well legislated with no diffamatory targetted with the purpose of information purposes, is a blessing for political reconstruction.
    God bless the United Kingdom. God save the Queen and the beloved Lords.
    Nazma FOURRE

  7. MilesJSD
    30/11/2012 at 11:10 am

    Such a hoo-hah is going on in the Press and in various “chambers” and “backrooms”
    even worldwide
    over this “Freedom” of the Press
    versus
    “State Censorship”.

    The simple point is that The Media is long, long overdue
    not so much for stifling “Regulation”
    as for up-front ‘verbatim-condensings’ and truth-falsehood assessments or ‘mind-functional analyses’ of the one-eyed, one-hand-tied-behind-the-back, tripe they waste our time energies and monies on, splashing around our eyes and ears by the hour;

    but these latter “watchdog” functions would surely offer good activity for senior students and classrooms in Schools and Universities
    which could be money-cost-effective as well as bringing daylight to The Public Mind, and developing keener mind-skills across the board in both Workplaces and Lifeplaces.
    —–
    Recall again Dr Joad of the BBC Brains Trust
    whose “It all depends w3hat you mean by ___”
    could easily cause a narrow-focusing-down for the whole half-hour broadcast,

    for clarification is a primary need when any honest human meeting is trying to “think straight”.
    And we need to include those occasional times when the Brains Trust added, also or instead,
    “It all depends what is meant by _____”

    descriptively, prescriptively, stipulatively,
    in a ‘street slang-cum-vernacular’ sense,
    and in any up-and-running ‘global’ or ‘foreign’-sense.
    ———–
    At least coldly show-up dispassionately, The Media’s various daily chargings-of-our-minds, like Bulls-in- China-Shops,
    and have teams constantly getting every enthymeme-gap the Media tries to swing over on us filled with the missing-truths and facts.

    We’ll do the remaining regulation, with the scissors
    or the incinerator.

  8. maude elwes
    30/11/2012 at 1:58 pm

    Could it be this ado over Leveson is really a disguise for taking away our right to knowledge and therefore government is using this report as the first step to shut down the internet? This guy thought it was happening a year ago.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-nOIMQWiFWY

    When you control what a nation sees, reads and hears, by allowing only one line of information, you reduce that nation to robotic thought, unable to question outside their controlled reference.

    The UK, along with the USA, have used this tactic for years. And we know about China and those other states that demand silence of their lambs.

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MWq-JH3roiA

    Feast on this for awhile. We are identical to the US. Have you noticed how the radio has virtually been taken over by American input. It is spreading like wildfire. Even to the point where they had an american as a presenter. Yes, an American radio show presenter on the BBC the other evening.

    What is at the back of this? Anyone want to guess?

  9. Lord Blagger
    30/11/2012 at 3:24 pm

    It’s revenge for the expenses.

    The fact that the speaker fought tooth and nail over releasing the information, only drove up the price that could be obtained by leaking it.

    Why? Because of the fraud

    It’s still going on.

    So what better than to get the revenge now.

    Look at that lib Cyril Smith. Why did special branch pull the prosecution?

    I bet you there was a D-Notice too.

  10. Nazma FOURRE
    01/12/2012 at 12:44 am

    Dear Lord Norton,
    The prime concern of a journalist is to provide information and to inform the population . Journalism itself is divided into many branches: press conferences, politial analysis , cultural division. It is up to journalists and their pen has the freedom of speech to comment on facts, be it with their objectiveness or subjectiveness. It all depends on the politics of their newspapers to criticise on events or to applaud such and such measures taken by the government.Journalism is an art, an art for information, criticism and freedom of speech so far as diffamatory contents do not prevail.
    God save the Queen and the beloved lords. God bless the United Kingdom.
    Nazma FOURRE

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