The Fiery British Press

The big stories for most of us vary between political scandals, horrifying crime cases and generally gloomy reports on the sad state of our international economy: in short, stories that enrage us, shock us or directly concern us. This is as you would expect it to be; more 'high-flying' issues of philosophical or polemical nature tend to draw us in far less. Whether we have the right electoral system; whether world trade treaties are fundamentally unfair; even the big issues of climate change and transnational peace and security tend only to bother us when they directly concern us. But for the people who report all these stories back to us, it is quite a different matter. There is one big story that, in directly affecting them, has much of the British media on the edges of their seats: press regulation.

This sounds like an odd thing for a western press like that of the United Kingdom to worry about. The battles over government regulation of the press, taboo subjects and 'bought' stories – or cover-ups, of course – sound like the debates of the last century, not of this one. But in fact, it is shocking to see how relevant these stories can still be. The lines of communication between the media, big businesses and the political class have been coming under a lot of scrutiny recently, and with good reason: they seem very busy.

They shouldn't be. The press should talk to business, and to the politicians of the time (that is evident in the fact that, in order to report on a story, one has to do interviews, take comments and all the rest of it). But what is slightly less 'all in a day's work' is the downright intimacy that we have seen of late between these three great pillars of public life. A recent British Prime Minister is the godfather of a daughter of one of the world' biggest media barons. Government advisors are increasingly coming from the world of big and murky business – causing no small number of scandals in the process. This is all of immense worry to the general public.

In fact, the fiery British press has gone further still. A scandal over phone hacking was the latest big public uproar, but for decades headlines in British newspapers have been raising many eyebrows. In fact, this is no modern problem. In the 1800s, the News of the World caused one reader to announce that he read a page, threw it in the bin, then took it out and burned it instead 'in case the cook might read it'. Another daily caused horror when it reputedly encouraged a serial killer in order to continue to cover the murders.

Of course, such stories sell. For all the domestic cleaning London might employ, residents still prefer to talk about the dirt. And this is partly why, in the wake of the most recent scandal – the hacking of mobile phones owned by celebrities, murder victims and politicians – the government has announced a toughened-up press regulator with legal backing. This has terrified the press but many of the public agree that it is necessary. So, will the fiery British press finally have to cool down a bit?

Only time will tell.