The 1st Amendment wasn’t a reward for “responsible” journalism

Phone hacking by the News of the World is a very political crime because it involves the hospitality of three Prime Ministers and the thwarted ambitions of others who’ve sought high office and received less than gentle treatment by NOTW. It’s a shabby excuse, however, for the state to assert an overriding public interest in the quality of western journalism.

Real liberals and today’s conservatives have lots of great causes to attend to without looking for ways to empower the state to help journalism improve its public standing.

Jeffrey Scott a former tabloid reporter and now a criminal lawyer put forward an amazing proposition in the Los Angeles Times. Over the headline “Tabloids don’t deserve the 1st Amendment” he complains that our “respect for freedom of the press” shelters their illegal conduct.

“Although the law provides us with the tools we need to punish crimes related to free speech, the judicial system is too quick to bow before the 1st Amendment, and as a result we end up shielding criminals who misrepresent themselves as journalists and activists.

“If Congress truly wants to resolve this issue, it should take a cue from the British Parliament and hold hearings to investigate this systemic problem.

“Crime is crime. Tabloid journalism uses illegal tactics, and it does not deserve absolute protection from the 1st Amendment.”

Click on: www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-shapiro-tabloids-20110719,0,6426135.story

Scott is a frustrated prosecutor. However, “freedom of speech, or of the press” was not enshrined in the US constitution to assist public administration or reward responsible journalism.

The 1^st amendment paid no regard to the uneven quality of social discourse in the 18^th century. Its authors assumed that the state would always enjoy an advantage in asserting popular notions and, indeed, in exploiting inflamed opinion.

As with the whole Bill of Rights, protection of the press was unqualified because it was written to serve a universal idea: that the truth will most likely be found in the free exchange of ideas, opinions, stories, gossip and new evidence amongst free people.

It was not written in a time when journalism was better than today and it wasn’t written to protect a particular standard of good practice. What it was absolute about was the right of the people alone to choose what to believe.

When John Milton laid out his immortal case for free speech in “Areopagitica” in 1644, London was teeming with annoying, unlicensed amateur pamphleteers. In his time, organized government in Europe—often on behalf of God’s insiders—arbitrarily blocked the publication of fanciful ideas that established opinion demeaned to be evil blasphemy.

Milton’s case for free expression and its most wholehearted realization in the American constitution shouldn’t be dimmed by persistent evidence that some people still abuse the market and break the law.

Image politics and Britain’s free press

Prime Minister David Cameron is in political trouble because of his close association with journalists who have used phone hacking to increase sales of the now defunct News of the World.  He wants desperately to share his embarrassment broadly, proposing a government commission to look into the “culture, practices and ethics” of the British press.

Like any run-of-the-mill narcissist, Cameron insists that everyone in journalism and politics has participated in his mistakes. Cameron declared, that “we” have all been in this together, “Yes, including me.”

And then he got serious:

“Of course it is vital that our press is free,” Mr. Cameron said. “That is an essential component of our democracy and our way of life. But press freedom does not mean that the press should be above the law.

“While it’s vital that a free press can tell truth to power, it is equally important that those in power can tell truth to the press.”

Click on: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/world/europe/10press.html 

This is trite and dangerous. The prospect of government “reform” only makes great journalism less a sure thing.

Politicians cozy up to the press because they want a tame press, not a free one.

Governments don’t necessarily tell the press the truth. The journalists that democracies rely on verify what governments claim to be true. That is an adversarial responsibility. It is not informed by empathetic dinner parties.

(As the cynic Sir Humphrey Appleby in the satire “Yes, Minister” warned, “You can’t believe anything, until the government denies it.”)

Being exposed for hanging out with hustlers and sucking up to a press baron, of course, diminishes Cameron’s image. However, they are exactly what image-obsessed Prime Ministers do. His discomfort provides a learning opportunity, not an excuse for his government to “reform” Britain’s free press.