Dacre speaks!

[claig]

Great article full of great points. Too many to list, but this is just a sample.

"our crime is more heinous than that.

It is that the Mail constantly dares to stand up to the liberal-Left consensus that dominates so many areas of British life, and instead represents the views of the ordinary people who are our readers and who don’t have a voice in today’s political landscape — and are too often ignored by today’s ruling elite.

The metropolitan classes, of course, despise our readers with their dreams (mostly unfulfilled) of a decent education and health service they can trust, their belief in the family, patriotism, self-reliance, and their over-riding suspicion of the State and the People Who Know Best."


...


"No other newspaper campaigns as vigorously as the Mail and I am proud of the ability of the paper’s 400 journalists (the BBC has 8,000) to continually set the national agenda on a whole host of issues.

I am proud that for years, while most of Fleet Street were in thrall to it, the Mail was the only paper to stand up to the malign propaganda machine of Tony Blair and his appalling henchman, Campbell."

.....


"The BBC is controlled, through the licence fee, by the politicians. ITV has to answer to Ofcom, a Government quango.

Newspapers are the only mass media left in Britain free from the control of the State."

www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2455256/PAUL-DACRE-Editor-Mail-answers-papers-critics.html

[claig]

Very good article on press freedom and the Dreyfus affair by Robert Harris. Article appeared in the free press.

"In the words of the philosopher, Isaiah Berlin: ‘Everything is what it is: liberty is liberty, not equality or fairness or justice or culture, or human happiness or a quiet conscience.’

The proposal that newspapers should have to register with a regulator or face the prospect of crippling damages in the courts if they are sued, strikes me as fundamentally inimical to liberty. The notion this regulator should meet in private to decide its judgments is troubling.

The idea that any such regulator would somehow operate in a bubble of dispassionate rectitude, unmoved by the fierce and vulgar prejudices of the day, is nonsense.

I fear it is entirely typical that the driving force behind this anti-libertarian proposal should be the Labour and Liberal Democrat parties."


www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2459727/ROBERT-HARRIS-A-chilling-lesson-history-shackling-Press-inimical-liberty.html

[PetiteRaleuse]

claig did you read the webchat yesterday? Gives another view on regulation....

[claig]

I read a webchat yesterday about a novel and the dangers that alcohol is doing to the country and how there is a campaign for minimum pricing levels for alcohol, but I didn't read anything that convinced me that we need a Royal Charter mechanism to regulate our free press.

I saw the worst of British cockatoos masquerading as the best.

You see, I think there should be novels written about what went on in our hospitals when some patients called 999 to ask for a drink of water, or when people were drinking out of vases, or when people were lying in their own faeces. I want to know how this could happen and whether anyone knew about it. That's what I think should be the priority. Instead of a campaign for mimimum pricing levels for alcohol, I think the priority should be a campaign for minimum levels of decent care in our hospitals.

I want to see the best of British values and the best of British people, like the brave Julie Bailey who led the Cure the NHS campaign, on our BBC. I want her to be on the New Year's Honours List and I want her to sit in the House of Lords and I want her to hold the Establishment to account and I want her to be on the BBC and on Newsnight repeatedly and I want her to make whoever was responsible for what went on, hang their heads in shame.

I think it is about priorities. Instead of people on the BBC discussing novels, I want to see Julie Bailey discussing hospitals and our NHS. Maybe if healthcare had been a greater priority, then maybe the terrible things we read about would never have occurred.

When it comes to press regulation, it worries me. I don't fully understand it, the Charters and all the rest, but I am worried, maybe wrongly, that it may hinder our free press revealing the truth in future about what goes on in hospitals and elsewhere.

I'm not a progressive, I'm not one of the "metropolitan classes", I'm just a lowly reader of what they call the Daily Fail. But I am worried that just as the Mail was shouted down by the entire Establishment over their reporting of the Liverpool Care Pathway and just as some of their reporting was referred to the Press Complaints Commission, then maybe with Royal Charter regulation they may be hindered in revealing truths about what goes on in our hospitals and what lies behind gagging orders and who is responsible for them.

I know that the Press do things wrong and I know that they can be intrusive on celebrities lives and on ordinary people too, but it worries me that the price of stopping that may be the price of preventing them revealing shocking truths about hospital care and other issues that the progressive elite, the "metropolitan classes" and the Establishment would rather remain concealed.

I don't think it is a price worth paying, which is why I support a free press, free from any form of State regulation. It may be muck-racking sometimes, but equally it is an outstanding protector of our standards and liberties at others.

It is about priorities, and for me, liberty, protection of the people and our standards and desires always come first.

[claig]

Has there ever been a webchat on MN with Julie Bailey?

I hope so, because I think that should take priority over people plugging novels, even if they are progressives.

[Wannabestepfordwife]

This really has been a fascinating thread!

Does anyone know why the right minds columnist section has been taken off the mail online? Are they trying to encourage people to buy the paper or is something afoot

[claig]

This is shocking news and tantamount to an outrage!
Right Minds is where right and correct thinking is expounded. If that has been removed, then we as a nation are the pooorer for it.

[claig]

I think it is still there if you click on Columnists and scroll down to Right Minds Bloggers.

[Wannabestepfordwife]

Thanks for that claig but it's not laid out very well it's almost if their trying to hide the more controversial writers

[claig]

I agree it is badly laid out and hidden. I don't know why. Maybe Nancy can shed light on what the hell is going on at the People's Paper!

[Wannabestepfordwife]

It just seems a bit of a silly move to me. I mean I would say right minds is one of the mails usp's so to hide it just doesn't make sense to me

[claig]

I agree, because for me it is the more detailed opinion and analysis pieces that are more interesting than the news headline stories which can be found on TV or radio. The opinion and analysis pieces can't be found elsewhere and are unique.