October 2008 - A pressing matter
Does having a free press uphold democracy and free speech? Or does it ultimately lead to bias, scaremongering and backroom deals?
We like to congratulate ourselves in Britain, on free speech and a free press. But how free is it? Rowdy, raucous, rude and outrageously politically biased, our newspapers shock visitors from other countries. In most of Europe and the US, the press is more dignified and restrained. Its political biases fairly reflect the balance of the politics in those countries. Some countries have far stricter privacy laws and don't pry into private lives or seek to tear down any celebrity as soon as they have set them up. Not so in Britain.
Our thuggish press may be to blame for the more yobbish aspects of our culture. If the way we speak to each other in public is through Sun and Daily Mail headlines of shock, fury and scandal, that must rub off on the way we behave. If public conversation is not civilised, it encourages Britain to be brutish and brutal in our judgements of each other.
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