How YOU can help save a vital freedom...

JOURNALISTS and newspapers aren’t always very nice. I have been on the receiving end of my trade’s less lovable features, during a (long-ago) family tragedy, and so I know this better than most reporters.

That’s why I’m not inclined to be pious about press freedom. We scribblers are never going to end up commemorated in stained-glass windows. Like many important parts of a free society, our liberty is a two-edged sword.

But you’ll miss it once it is gone. There is, literally, nobody else with the power to take on big government and big corporations. They talk to us (and try ceaselessly to bamboozle and cajole us) because they are afraid of us.

And if they weren’t, they would be greedier, more incompetent, lazier, and more crooked than they are.

Thomas Jefferson, one of the founders of the USA, a man who understood the cynicism and untrustworthiness of politicians very well, because he was a politician, put it best. ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government, I should not hesitate a moment to prefer the latter.’

Now, lesser men and women are quietly building a coffin for press freedom in this country. Some of them have had their own nasty actions exposed by newspapers. Others just don’t like seeing opinions they don’t share given a powerful platform.

There is still time to stop them, but it is very short.

Thanks to a foolish law passed by David Cameron, the Culture Secretary, Karen Bradley, can by a stroke of her pen bring back that ancient wrong, state regulation of newspapers, under the threat of bankruptcy for those who don’t comply. Please write to her, as soon as you can, urging her not to do so – or use the coupon on Page 44.