28 June 2014

NO TO #levesonnow

Some of the more ludicrous elements of Brian Leveson's proposals for press regulation were toned down in the royal charter – but the threat of punitive damages in libel and privacy cases for non-signatories to the charter remains. That is de facto licensing.

And I'm against it. I'm sorry, but I'm more worried about the future of Private Eye and Tribune and Index on Censorship and Red Pepper than I am about trying to give Rupert Murdoch a soft symbolic kick in the teeth.

If half the effort and money that has been put into Hacked Off had been put into credible left periodicals, Britain would be a much better place, not least for for left-wing writers and editors.

The pro-Leveson campaign has been a gigantic waste of resources conducted with little or no concern for the minnows of radical dissent that actually exist, doing real radical journalism, and it has largely been conducted by people in comfortable university chairs who have done no radical journalism for many years... unless you count their moaning about Murdoch.

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