This has direct relevance to Free Republic and other internet media sites like this. Give the government the ability to regulate things that should be left to the free market, and we give government the right to abuse.
Some of Rupert Murdoch's employees did some really bad things. I don't know anyone who disputes that, including Murdoch himself who fired the employees and some of his closest senior advisers and shut down an entire newspaper.
The solution to illegal hacking and wiretapping is to prosecute the criminals. The solution to irresponsible media is to stop buying the newspaper or turn the channel on the TV. Those are two very different solutions for two very different problems, and applying the wrong solution leads to cures that are much worse than the disease.
Let's be glad that what happened in Britain can't happen in the United States, at least under current law.
This happened because of a British tradition of government regulation not only of the broadcast spectrum (which is probably unavoidable) but also of the press. We declared independence from Britain for a reason. If government has the right to control media to make sure only “fit persons” are in charge, it can do abusive things like this.
Hacking into people's emails and cell phones is illegal — and should be. However, once we grant the principle that government has the right to regulate media, do we want to let the head of a company which has a history of serious criminal activity continue to be allowed to participate in a regulated media business? I do not see a way to avoid the logical conclusion unless Murdoch can prove that he really did have no idea what was going on in his own company and wasn't being willfully and deliberately ignorant.
I don't dispute that the actual practice in Britain is not as bad as what is possible in theory and in “extreme situations.”
The problem is that without the protections of the First Amendment, self-censorship becomes a problem. I've posted at the end of this note just two examples of problems in Britain that would not be possible in the United States. Free Republic people would be screaming bloody murder if President Obama tried to do what was being discussed by the British government in these articles — and not just Free Republic and other American conservatives but also the ACLU, Huffington Post, Daily Kos, and much of the political activist culture on both sides of the aisle.
The fact that most of these plans were abandoned in Britain is not the point. The point is that some things are possible in Britain which are not possible (at least so far) in the United States.
I mean no disrespect to British conservatives. There's a different constitutional tradition on the two sides of the Atlantic on such things as press freedom, gun rights, establishment of religion, etc., and those differences stem from different views about the proper limits on government power. While British and American conservatives may agree on many things, the differences are important and cut to the root of why 1776 happened.
Certainly British conservatives are great allies to have, but that doesn't mean we agree on everything.
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MPs seek to censor the media
The Independent
By KIM SENGUPTA
MONDAY 10 NOVEMBER 2008
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/mps-seek-to-censor-the-media-1006607.html
“Britain's security agencies and police would be given unprecedented and legally binding powers to ban the media from reporting matters of national security, under proposals being discussed in Whitehall. The Intelligence and Security Committee, the parliamentary watchdog of the intelligence and security agencies which has a cross-party membership from both Houses, wants to press ministers to introduce legislation that would prevent news outlets from reporting stories deemed by the Government to be against the interests of national security. The committee also wants to censor reporting of police operations that are deemed to have implications for national security...”
Britain Blames Social Media For Class Riots, Looks to Censorship
Facebook, Twitter, and BlackBerries are likely the first to be censored
By Jason Mick
Daily Tech
August 12, 2011 9:25 AM
“Last week the fatal shooting of a 29-year-old man by members of the Metropolitan Police Service in Tottenham, North London, enraged the nation's working class. People in several British cities took to the streets engaging in looting, arson, burglary, robbery and ‘general disorder.’ Five civilians were killed, 186 police officers were injured, and over 1,200 people have been imprisoned for their role in the riots. Property damages are estimated at £100M ($161M USD) ... To try to cut that off, the nation's political elite are considering a sweeping campaign of censorship of social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook. In a Thursday speech to Parliament, embattled British Prime Minister David Cameron remarked, ‘Everyone watching these horrific actions will be struck by how they were organized via social media. Free flow of information can be used for good. But it can also be used for ill. And when people are using social media for violence, we need to stop them.’ He said that the government and police are going ‘to look at whether it would be right to stop people communicating via these websites and services when we know they are plotting violence, disorder and criminality.’”
What we are seeing is a melt-down of the liberals, no more, no less.