The Bureau Recommends: Don’t let the hacking scandal undermine press freedom
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The phone hacking scandal engulfing the News of the World does not justify state regulation of the press, an anti-censorship website has argued.
The article by Rohan Jayasekera, associate editor of the Index on Censorship, argues the News of World’s wrong doings should be dealt with as the “plain criminal or civil offences” that they are and should not be used as a justification for curtailing the freedom of the press in general.
Jayasekera says: “There is no public interest defence. Without that the journalist’s crimes have no more to do with his trade than it would be if he fiddled his tax or murdered his postman.”
He acknowledges that balancing public interest against competing interests such as the right to privacy or commercial confidentiality is not easy.
But Jayasekera says a new authority to make the distinction is not what is needed, rather deliberations over such decisions should be left where they are – with the courts.
The article quotes playwrite Tom Stoppard.
“Junk journalism is the evidence of a society that has got at least one thing right, that there should be nobody with the power to dictate where responsible journalism begins.”
