YOUR LAST CHANCE TO SAVE PRESS FREEDOM
IMAGINE someone throws a brick through your window. the case goes to court and the brick-thrower is convicted. But you are told you must pay for your window — and his brick. An unbelievable injustice? Yes — but that’s just what Britain’s newspapers face. now, the Culture secretary must decide whether or not to implement a piece of legislation so pernicious, so illiberal, it is hard to believe Parliament ever passed it. But it did. Under section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, rushed into law after the Leveson Inquiry, any newspaper that refuses to join a regulator approved under the government’s Royal Charter for the Press, and is sued for libel, will be forced to pay the other side’s legal costs — even if the newspaper wins.
EVEN IF YOU WIN, YOU LOSE: If this law is implemented it won’t matter if an article is true, lawfully published, serves the public interest and the complaint is thrown out by the court — any newspaper not signed up to an approved regulator will face paying all the costs, every single penny.
FREE TICKET FOR CROOKS, BANKRUPTCY
FOR NEWSPAPERS: Costs in High Court legal actions routinely run into hundreds of thousands of pounds — sometimes millions. This legislation gives anyone who wants to silence journalists a free ticket. Newspapers that fight — particularly local newspapers — will face being bankrupted.
WHO WILL EXPOSE INJUSTICE? Most of our greatest injustices are exposed not by MPs or the police, but by newspapers. The MPs’ expenses scandal; the Rotherham sex grooming cover-up; the monumental failures over the murder of Stephen Lawrence — just a few of the investigations that would never have been possible if Section 40 was in force. WHY NOT JOIN THE STATE-APPROVED REGULATOR? Called Impress, it claims to be independent, but is bankrolled by former F1 boss Max Mosley, on a mission to ‘reform’ the Press ever since a newspaper revealed his sado-masochistic orgy with five prostitutes. It has just a handful of micro-publisher members, some barely more than online blogs. No mainstream newspaper has joined.
SO WHO REGULATES THE MAIL? The Daily Mail and 2,600 other newspapers, magazines and websites do not believe the Press can be truly free under rules imposed by politicians. We belong to a regulator which is entirely independent of the Government. Chaired by former Appeal Court Judge Sir Alan Moses, the Independent Press Standards Organisation regularly orders front page corrections and — if necessary — can impose fines of up to £1 million.
. . . AND THEN THERE’S LEVESON TWO: The original Leveson Inquiry and associated criminal trials have already cost the taxpayer nearly £50 million. Despite a raft of reforms to the Press, police and politics, the Culture Secretary is under pressure to go over it all again with Leveson Two.