Keep Press Powerful and Free
Sammy McDonald opposes the motion, ‘This House Believes the Press Has Too Much Power and Not Enough Accountability’, and argues that in an age of autocracy, we must fight to keep the press both free and powerful, not curb its power.
By Sammy McDonald
As I write this, I can check the headlines of publications like the Daily Mail, Spiked, or the Express. It doesn’t exactly paint a ringing endorsement of the state of the British press. Much is a mixture between the trivialities of Tabloid gossip — the pressing national need to examine Beyoncé’s dress to the hateful articles on the supposed transgender threats to families. I understand the profoundly corrosive effect ‘the circus’ can have on the rights of minority communities and national discourse. On days like this, it is tempting to yearn for a modicum of central regulation or control to set such an industry straight.
But then I also remember what a privilege it is and how much has been sacrificed for us to live in a society to be able to write, read, publish, and circulate information and ideas freely, without discrimination and disfavour from a central government. The freedom in defence of truth and the freedom of opinion is a cause many die for every year and a right that we are profoundly privileged to enjoy. For what would be grounds for imprisonment in the darkness of totalitarianism, I have the freedom at my fingertips to access articles I profoundly disagree with and am offended by and, more importantly, what the government disagrees with.
Journalistic freedom is not a carte blanche for illegality. Abuses such as those in the phone hacking scandal should rightly shock us. But we must ask ourselves — in an age of autocracy and rising demands from demagogues and populists for a subservient, compliant media (or, in the words of Donald Trump, the “fake news media” who are declared “enemies of the people”) and amidst growing attacks on journalists, are we comfortable beginning a process of governmental regulation? Who exactly regulates the ‘accountability’ of the press or the fact-checking of opinion? Can we trust a government, embroiled in a mesh of cronyism and corruption, to hold standards to account? And where do we stop in the futile quest to insulate ourselves from falsehood in a world of social media? I remained unconvinced that starting a regulation process is worth the potential trade-off and fundamental questions about the freedoms they give us. The problem with the press is not that they have too much power; it is that too many do not live up to the ideals of the profession or challenge power. In fact, it is that many publications are not powerful enough. I, too, tire of journalistic complicity in governmental misdeeds. But the idea that regulation, with all the influence it gives the central government, will fix this is a fallacy.
It’s worth remembering that for every Toby Young or Rod Liddle out there, there are equally journalists who wade into danger for the pursuit of truth. The very nature of freedom is that there will always be those who abuse it and use it to speak and say vileness and falsehood, but that does not make that freedom less important. Freedom is not and cannot be just about enabling things you- and your government- are comfortable with. I think, in particular, of journalists who were killed attempting to document the horrors and torments of the Russian Invasion of Ukraine. I think of Brett Renaud, a filmmaker who was killed trying to report Russian extrajudicial killings on March 13. Mindful of my background, I also think in particular of Lyra McKee, a freelance journalist who was murdered for exposing the New IRA in Northern Ireland in 2019.
We should celebrate this fearless defence of the truth, a right denied from many corners of the world, and it is more than worth the trade-off for those who abuse that power. This freedom is more important now than ever as autocrats seek to divide us and consolidate power over the press, ultimately at our expense. I encourage everyone who shares this desire to go into journalism with that fervour and replace the morass of the culture wars the British press has sunk into. But this does not make the freedom and power of the press any less important. Metternich, fulminating against the world, famously declared to the Carlsbad Congress, “The greatest and consequently most urgent evil now is the press”. In an odd sense, he was right. The press was, and is, threatening to people like him and to those who cloak themselves behind secret agents of oppression. But he could not stop the tide of the press from sweeping him out of office. And we must keep that flame that autocrats so fear alive and not smoulder it under the bureaucracy of regulations. The press must be kept both free and powerful.
Sammy McDonald is a first year BA in History student at St John’s College, University of Cambridge | Instagram: @cappucinos123
The opinions expressed in this piece are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Cambridge Union Society.
On January 26, Cambridge Union Society debated the motion, “This House Believes the Press Has Too Much Power and Not Enough Accountability”. The motion passed with a vote of 153 in favour, 66 abstentions, and 99 in opposition.
