For more than a hundred years the Daily Mirror has sought to hold power to account.
We have fought on your behalf to expose wrongdoing, champion the truth and speak for those without a voice.
Boris Johnson does not want to hear your voice.
The Conservatives have taken the unprecedented decision to
No other national newspaper has been denied this access.
The Tories are showing contempt not just for independent journalism but Mirror readers.
This paper has been singled out because we strive on your behalf to challenge the Conservatives’ record in office, question the Prime Minister’s fitness for office and expose his repeated lies.
In a step that should alarm anyone who cares about editorial independence, the Conservatives have decided that access to the PM is conditional on favourable coverage.
This is part of a pattern of behaviour by the Tories that has seen them doctor videos of opposition MPs and rebrand their Twitter account as a fact checking service.
Two years’ ago Boris Johnson warned that freedom of expression in Britain was under attack.
The then Foreign Secretary said that free speech was an “integral part of a free society” and without a free press any “country will eventually suffer from corruption and economic decay.”
On this the Daily Mirror agrees with the Prime Minister.
The health of a democracy depends on politicians being held to account by the media.
At times this scrutiny can be uncomfortable and testing but it acts as a disinfectant against lying, arrogance and misuse of power.
Mr Johnson, a former journalist, is now trying to muffle the very press he used to champion.
A free press should mean just that: the freedom to challenge those in power without fear or favour.
Instead of accepting the media’s right to hold him to account, Mr Johnson has chosen to close down criticism by barring critical journalists.
In doing so he sets a worrying precedent that should concern all broadcasters and publishers.
Other political parties will be given the excuse to shut out journalists from organisations they find troublesome.
The Conservatives once held the torch for a free press. Now they are in danger of extinguishing it.
