Britain’s dodgy deal

No one can say the British press didn’t bring this on itself. Some news organizations — reckless tabloid papers, for the most part — disgraced themselves by hacking into cellphones and victimizing vulnerable people, and now the whole industry faces the consequences. Unfortunately, the cure prescribed by the politicians is worse than the disease.

Leaders of the three main British political parties got together late one night last week and cooked up a deal for a new agency to regulate the media. They want to replace the newspaper industry’s self-regulatory body with a much more powerful, government-sanctioned regulator.

It would have the power to order prominent corrections, impose fines of up to £1 million (about $1.6 million) and require arbitration for people who feel they’ve been harmed by a newspaper. Organizations that don’t join would face steep “exemplary damages” if they are sued and lose in court. All this would be set up under the authority of a Royal Charter, effectively ending a tradition of unlicensed newspaper publishing that goes back to 1695 in Britain.

It’s entirely understandable that victims of Britain’s irresponsible tabloids would cheer on such measures. But much more is at stake. Politicians and others with powerful positions are always irked by a free, and freewheeling, press. It’s no surprise that they’re eager to seize on the news media’s worst excesses to bring it to heel.

In fact, the phone-hacking scandal was exposed by the press itself, with the Guardian newspaper revealing the misdeeds of reporters and editors associated with the defunct News of the World tabloid. Now some 60 journalists face criminal charges and the News of the World has been shut down. All this without any new press control agency.

The lesson in all this is that ethical behaviour and meaningful self-regulation are the news media’s best defence against those who would curb its freedom. The kind of egregious conduct that threatens the British press has never been found in Canada, and responsible newspapers (including the Star) belong to such bodies as the Ontario Press Council, which upholds high standards of accountability and accuracy.

The British press is learning the hard way that forfeiting public trust risks undermining liberties that took centuries to win.