Stop our free speech from being torn to shreds by backing press freedom in face of Max Mosley’s tyranny
Sun columnist and IPSO board member says the press should be able to hold public figures and institutions to account without fear of court cases that could bankrupt papers
SHOULD newspapers expose dodgy cops who beat up suspects and fabricate evidence? Or the Crown Prosecution Service for covering up police corruption?
What about police and politicians who turn a blind eye to trafficking of under-age girls by Pakistani sex gangs?
Or greedy charities, energy giants and oil companies who rip us off?
Or ministers who lie about uncontrolled mass immigration, or shoddy hospitals who let patients die. Or the so-called care homes who abuse your mum and dad?
These are some of the true and shocking news stories exposed recently in the national interest.
Sunlight is the best disinfectant.
But the rich and powerful keep us in the dark — and sometimes illegally hack the phones of journalists who find out.
Without newspapers you would know none of this. And if tycoon Max Mosley has his wicked way, soon you never will.
Mosley loathes the press for revealing his German- themed sado-masochistic sex romps with prostitutes.
He is on a witch-hunt which puts every newspaper in the land — local and national — in peril.
If he succeeds, newspapers will be gagged by a draconian law which puts paid to three centuries of press freedom. If enacted, Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act gives anyone with a grievance the power to take a newspaper to court, with all costs paid by the publisher — win or lose.
“Plebgate” Tory MP Andrew Mitchell would have walked away with money in his pocket even after losing his baseless libel case against The Sun.
So would fellow Tory Tim Yeo who angered a judge with “unreliable and untruthful” evidence against the Sunday Times. Every corrupt character in the land, public or private, would be able to take the press to the cleaners.
The only alternative would be to surrender to a state- supervised “watchdog” funded — surprise, surprise — by Mosley.
That’s a blatant invitation to ambulance-chasing lawyers to cash in, as they did with the trumped-up claims against soldiers in Iraq.
How did we get into this alarming Catch-22? It began with the phone-hacking scandal and the 2012 Leveson Inquiry into the press.
Its ambiguous report called for statutory press regulation AND an independent watchdog acceptable to newspapers.
The industry picked up the challenge and delivered arms-length funding for the Independent Press Standards Organisation. Full disclosure: I am an Ipso board member.
Nearly every newspaper and magazine in the country signed up to Ipso which swiftly established a reputation as a prompt, free and impartial referee.
This is not enough for Mosley. He funded Impress which, as the only applicant, was appointed as the industry’s statutory regulator — without the support of a single major news organisation.
He also wants another costly Leveson-style inquiry.
Ministers must now decide whether to implement Section 40, offering the press a stark choice. Bend the knee to Mosley’s stooges or face crippling penalties in the courts.
It would be an act of state coercion unseen in this country for three centuries.
Britain may be the birthplace of democracy, but democracy cannot work without free speech. And free speech is useless without a free press to report it.
You won’t find the truth online. Digital networks don’t invest in news. They steal it from newspapers who do.
Those papers are already under threat from the internet which grabs the lion’s share of global advertising revenue.
Mosley claims publications who print the truth have nothing to fear. This is nonsense.
Britain has already dropped to 38th place between Tonga and South Africa in world press freedom rankings.
Section 40 would kill investigative journalism stone dead.
We cannot trust those in power. Concealing truth and covering it up is a way of life.
As for lawyers, there are too many like greedy shyster Phil Shiner who saw Britain’s Iraq war heroes as rich pickings.
The press and the public’s right to know risks being smothered unless ministers wake up to the threat.
IF you believe in a free press and want to sound the alarm, write to your MP or Culture Secretary Karen Bradley. Or even simpler, join the online petition you can find at freethepress.co.uk.
Unions are putting Britain in a JAM
THERESA MAY balks at tackling the union Trots who are paralysing Christmas travel.
The PM fears she will be seen as picking on just-about-managing voters, or JAMs as they are known.
But how? Train crew are well paid while hundreds of thousands struggling to get into work are in a proper JAM, barely managing their jobs, family life and hospital care.
London is already a virtual no-go area for drivers and commuters, with roads gridlocked by Boris’s blasted bike lanes, loitering Uber cabs and Amazon’s frantic white van men.
If we are to flourish after Brexit, let alone survive as the world’s fourth largest economy, Mrs M needs to start union-bashing fast.