A “repressive regime” that “menaces” newspapers, according to Professor Tim Luckhurst of Kent University, helping launch a report on post-Leveson press regulation from the Free Speech Network. It could be the “death of investigative journalism”, according to Nick Cohen in the Spectator. Surely some exaggerated anxiety here, you suppose, as the royal charter recognition panel prepares to recognise a press regulator (Impress) which has no major clients but is willing to join the charter club – as opposed to the vast majority of papers and magazines, which have joined the Independent Press Standards Organisation and a few (the Guardian, Observer, FT and Indy) who’ve not joined anything.
What is this touted “repression”? A court’s ability to inflict punitive costs on papers in libel or privacy hassles - even if they’ve won the case. You win; you pay up, nevertheless, on a tariff that could soon bring editors to the their knees. Histrionic hysteria? It couldn’t happen in good old GB? Just consider the total £13m Operation Elveden bill run up by the Metropolitan Police pursuing reporters under the 13th-century common-law offence of “conspiring to commit misconduct in public office”: arrested 34, convicted two (with one appeal pending). It’s a ludicrous result using ludicrous means. If this were Turkey, Westminster would be hanging its head in shame. Repressive? Of course. But also – charitably – an accidental, avoidable idiocy.
