Press freedom

Recently I have watched, read and listened to a lot of talk about Rupert Murdoch and how awful he is. He has been made out to be a master villain, according to some people as bad as Saddam Hussein and Colonel Gaddafi. I will agree that Rupert Murdoch has probably over the time in charge of his empire done some unscrupulous things, he has probably been involved in some underhand dealings and is no way perfect. But I believe the behaviour of some of the press, media and our politicians over the 'hacking scandal' that has engulfed us has gone way over the top.

There is no doubt that Rupert Murdoch's news organisations have behaved totally wrong, the hacking of a dead girls phone is appalling. But the amount of press coverage given over to this story has been absolutely ridiculous, there has been a 'witch hunt' and it seems that many within politics have seen this as their opportunity to get their own back on the press over the expenses scandal.

Ex EU Commissioner Neil Kinnock has stated that he would like to see laws put in place to stifle press freedom. This is from the man who was European Commission vice-president responsible for anti-fraud, who not only did everything he could to stop a report being published about the staggering lack of control on EU funds. He was also responsible for sacking Marta Andreasen, the head accountant for the EU because she wanted to reform it and bring to light the appalling fraud within the EU. So when this man is calling for greater controls on the press we really should be concerned.

The BBC on Tuesday night gave their whole Newsnight programme over to maligning Rupert Murdoch, not one person was put up to defend him. I watched the one o'clock news on Wednesday and out of a 25 minute news bulletin 11 minutes was given over to the hacking story. That same bulletin gave one and a half minutes over to the crises in the euro. This sums up the BBC and many of those who work within broadcasting. There seems to me to be a drive from those who work within this organisation to criticise anyone who does not follow their left wing beliefs.

As I have said above I do not in anyway believe that Rupert Murdoch is a saint, and maybe he has been responsible for some of the ills within our society. But the amount of vilification this man has received from so many politicians is beyond the pale. Many of those Labour and Tory politicians who are very quick to criticise him and his papers were not only a very short while ago happy to cosy up to him and his friends. This shows how totally hypocritical our politicians are!

What I hope that does not come out of all of this controversy is controls on the press, I believe it is very important that we have a free press. If we do not I believe our country will be worse off for it. Think about it, if we didn't have a free press would the scandal around MPs expenses been published? Would many of the stories about politicians behaving badly come to light? Whether you like it or not a free press is very important, because if we do not have freedom of the press the government could almost behave anyway it wants.

Benjamin Franklin said 'he would rather have newspapers without government rather than government without newspapers', and I couldn't agree with him more. As I watch as our ability to control ourselves and make new laws is gradually moving to Brussels I believe it is even more important that we continue to allow our press the freedoms it has always had. If we don't this will mean an ever growing control by our leaders and potentially this could lead to very dangerous times.

Many governments over the years have behaved appallingly, and many of them are democratic, without the press and the fear of being held to account I believe that many would behave even worse.

This is my last post for a couple of weeks, as I am off on holiday.