{"id":817,"date":"2017-05-04T13:26:52","date_gmt":"2017-05-04T12:26:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/?p=817"},"modified":"2017-05-04T14:41:57","modified_gmt":"2017-05-04T13:41:57","slug":"we-shouldnt-take-freedom-of-the-press-for-granted","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/we-shouldnt-take-freedom-of-the-press-for-granted\/","title":{"rendered":"We shouldn\u2019t take freedom of the Press for granted"},"content":{"rendered":"

Last week, Reporters Without Borders\u00a0published the World Press Freedom Index<\/strong><\/a> for 2017, with the UK currently ranked 40th\u00a0out of 180 countries.<\/p>\n

In the past five years,\u00a0the UK has fallen 12\u00a0places in the\u00a0index,\u00a0and is now placed below Ghana, South Africa and\u00a0Chile.<\/p>\n

The reasons for this\u00a0alarming\u00a0decline are threefold.<\/p>\n

Firstly, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which\u00a0was originally designed to protect the public from extreme threats but has been used by local authorities to undertake covert surveillance on people suspected of a wide range of minor offences. Cleveland Police used the act<\/strong><\/a> to track calls and texts made by three journalists after they published articles critical of the force.<\/p>\n

Secondly, concerns over the Law Commission’s\u00a0proposal\u00a0to ministers that\u00a0prison terms for\u00a0whistle-blowing<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0should be significantly\u00a0increased to equal those handed out for state-sponsored espionage. One interesting point to note is that since these proposals were leaked to the Press, ministers seem to have lost their enthusiasm for them! Another example of why we need a robust Fourth Estate.<\/p>\n

Thirdly, and perhaps most importantly, the new Press regulator Impress does not have the backing of most editors.\u00a0No\u00a0national newspaper\u00a0has so far agreed\u00a0to voluntarily join\u00a0Impress. On the contrary,\u00a0over 90 per cent of UK newspapers and magazines have voluntarily signed up to a rival system of independent self-regulation under IPSO (the Independent Press Standards Organisation).<\/p>\n

\"Press<\/p>\n

Newspapers and media organisations which do not sign up to Impress face the prospect of having to pay the legal costs of\u00a0libel cases brought against them, whether they win or lose.<\/p>\n

Most newspapers\u00a0will consequently become\u00a0far less willing to expose wrongdoing by wealthy individuals\u00a0or corporations, even where such a story\u00a0is\u00a0clearly in the public interest.<\/p>\n

Media commentators believe that Impress will result in a significant curtailing of investigative reporting, particularly by regional and local media.<\/p>\n

In addition to concerns about the situation here in the UK, there is also the very worrying\u00a0emergence of deep hostility to the media in the US.<\/p>\n

A sustained\u00a0series of attacks\u00a0on the Press\u00a0by President Trump’s administration,\u00a0including a description of journalists as “among the most dishonest human beings on earth” are a shocking departure from the United States’\u00a0long and proud history of Press freedom.<\/p>\n

This kind of language sets the tone of global political discourse and arguably creates an environment in which\u00a0any attack on news or political journalism is perfectly acceptable.<\/p>\n

The RSF Index shows us that we are at a critical point where journalists’ ability to investigate \u2013\u00a0indeed,\u00a0even to report the news of the day \u2013 is being threatened, even in advanced Western economies.<\/p>\n

We must not allow governments to erode the freedom of the Press, a fundamental pillar on which\u00a0our\u00a0democracy is built.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Last week, Reporters Without Borders\u00a0published the World Press Freedom Index for 2017, with the UK currently ranked 40th\u00a0out of 180 countries. In the past five years,\u00a0the UK has fallen 12\u00a0places…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":819,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,1],"tags":[],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=817"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":822,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/817\/revisions\/822"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/819"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=817"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=817"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mediahouseinternational.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=817"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}