Regulation of the Press.

[Audley Strange]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-21825823

So all the parties finally agreed on their regulation. Some will think it a good thing other a bad thing others no doubt will assume that such a "watchdog" will be toothless.

I had my own suggestions a while back which were clearly ignored, that was that any newspaper found to have committed libel or fraud or broke the law should have to commit to the exact amount of column inches and pages including front pages to their apologies and admissions of wrong doing as they did for the articles they published which were false. Thus if a week-long malicious gossip campaign splashed all over the front pages was found to be lies or inaccurate, then for an entire week the paper had to publish their guilt, exposing their journalists as liars and cheats along with continual profuse apologies. Given that the journalists would no longer be immune to open public scrutiny and criticism in the same way the other parts of our establishment culture are, and given that such a regulation would financially fuck the perpetrators I would imagine it would stop this horseshit pretty quickly.

A

[Rum]

It is a fine line between freedom of the press and the skulduggery, law breaking and misery making that got them into this pickle to begin with. They do seem to have struck a pretty liberal balance from what I can make of it so far.

[klr]

I wish I could be so optimistic. From this vantage point, it seems like a huge fudge*, but I'll give it the benefit of the doubt.

*Multi-party political horse-trading in the early hours of the morning often produces poor results.

[PsychoSerenity]

I had my own suggestions a while back which were clearly ignored, that was that any newspaper found to have committed libel or fraud or broke the law should have to commit to the exact amount of column inches and pages including front pages to their apologies and admissions of wrong doing as they did for the articles they published which were false. Thus if a week-long malicious gossip campaign splashed all over the front pages was found to be lies or inaccurate, then for an entire week the paper had to publish their guilt, exposing their journalists as liars and cheats along with continual profuse apologies. Given that the journalists would no longer be immune to open public scrutiny and criticism in the same way the other parts of our establishment culture are, and given that such a regulation would financially fuck the perpetrators I would imagine it would stop this horseshit pretty quickly.

I've said the exact same thing myself. The trouble is that you can't have truly free journalism with wildly different publishing platforms. There are plenty of humble bloggers that have ripped to shreds articles from big papers, by doing real research and providing facts and sources to back up their arguments. The main one that bothered me was the lies and misinformation of the 'No' campaign against electoral reform spread everywhere across the right wing press. I didn't see a single argument that wasn't thoroughly debunked or shown to be based on outright lies, yet I only saw the rebuttals because I was actively looking for them. When ten million people read one thing day-in-day out, and only a few thousand ever read a proper response to it, or just a different group of ten million people, large numbers can easily be misled. Give independent investigative journalists the power to challenge the accuracy of what is published, and if their evidence holds up, make the original publisher correct the mistake. And yes, if they've broken the law, the same thing. There's not much point in one publisher writing about something another publisher has done wrong, even with the fines etc that this regulation promises to bring. It needs to be seen by the readership of the publisher that committed the crime, and in big bold letters.

[John_fi_Skye]

Those three parties are all the same - Tweedle-dum, Tweedle-dee and Tweedle-diddle-i-do - so it's no surprise that they could agree measures that continue to give freedoms to the media that portray them positively. We have the media we deserve because we've let them become like that.

Excuse me while I shake my head, and drink more whisky. I may even spit.

[Tyrannical]

How free is the press when so much of it is controlled by a handful of individuals anyways?

[John_fi_Skye]

How free is the press when so much of it is controlled by a handful of individuals anyways?

They're not free. They're double-plus-unfree.

As my grandad used to say, folk wonder why I take strong drink.

[Xamonas Chegwé]

Ain't no such thing as a free lunch press.

[Svartalf]

Ain't no such thing as a free lunch press.

Not when it is in the hands of less than a half dozen tycoons

[John_fi_Skye]

Ain't no such thing as a free lunch press.

Not when it is in the hands of less than a half dozen tycoons

And out of the money that buys their very comfortable lifestyle, they pay for those very same media to peddle the propaganda that encourages sufficient numbers of us to vote for the politicians who will safeguard that lifestyle. This is why our alleged democracy is a fucking sham. Guy Fawkes had the right idea. Blow the fuckers up.

[Warren Dew]

It is a fine line between freedom of the press and the skulduggery, law breaking and misery making that got them into this pickle to begin with.

Indeed. If journalists behaved themselves like they should, that innocent Nixon would have been immune to petty criticism, and he'd still be president!

[Audley Strange]

Ain't no such thing as a free lunch press.

Not when it is in the hands of less than a half dozen tycoons

And out of the money that buys their very comfortable lifestyle, they pay for those very same media to peddle the propaganda that encourages sufficient numbers of us to vote for the politicians who will safeguard that lifestyle. This is why our alleged democracy is a fucking sham. Guy Fawkes had the right idea. Blow the fuckers up.

You're sounding more like me all the time, though fuck restoring allies of the Black Brethren of Rome to the throne.

[JimC]

Australia is in the middle of our own political row about press regulations, with a proposed bill by Senator Conroy (whom I don't trust at all) facing opposition from all sides...

From an article in the Age:

Labor's controversial media reforms may not satisfy human rights laws, according to a joint parliamentary committee.
Of particular concern to the committee is Labor's proposal to appoint a single person - the public interest media advocate - to oversee newspaper regulators and judge whether media ownership is ''in the public interest''.
''These bills appear to limit the right to freedom of expression and freedom of association,'' wrote the committee about the two bills that govern the self-regulation of newspapers.
''In order to justify these limitations, it must be demonstrated that the new scheme seeks to address a legitimate objective''.
Chaired by Labor MP and former speaker, Harry Jenkins, the parliamentary joint committee on human rights comprises five members from the Labor party, four from the Coalition and one from the Greens.
The group was formed last year to judge whether bills that come before the House of Representatives are compatible with human rights.
Its report on the human rights implications of Labor's media reform bills will be tabled in Parliament on Wednesday but was released early because of political urgency.
The committee will write to Communications Minister Stephen Conroy and ask him ''why changes to the regulation of the news media is considered necessary''.
It will ask Senator Conroy ''whether other less intrusive alternatives... were considered'' and ''why this scheme was chosen over any less intrusive measures''.
The committee wants to know precisely how the media advocate's ''power will be exercised'', and questions why this person's decisions will not be subject to review.
If the government forces media owners to accept the decisions of the advocate without the possibility of a review, the committee says this would be ''inconsistent'' with article 14 of the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which recognises the ''right of access to courts''.


Read more: http://www.theage.com.au/opinion/politi ... z2NyKDm700

[FBM]

Oh. I see that we're not talking about a wine press. Nvm.

[Clinton Huxley]

Oh. I see that we're not talking about a wine press. Nvm.

Nor a trouser press.