May wants to foil plans for tighter press regulation. No wonder our biased media love her
I wouldn’t be surprised if the next edition of the Oxford English Dictionary simply printed a photograph of Theresa May as its definition of the word “corruption”.
She wants to end attempts to hold the press accountable for their actions – in order to make it possible for the right-wing, Tory-supporting media to continue with such activities as the hacking of Milly Dowler’s phone, the disruption of a murder investigation, and the moment they gave false hope to a grieving mother.
These are all recent examples of behaviour the Leveson Inquiry was intended to end. But Leveson isn’t over, and the Conservatives announced in March that it never would be – they were scrapping the second stage of the inquiry.
The decision provoked a furious backlash from people who have been harmed by press misbehaviour, and former Labour leader Ed Miliband tabled an amendment to the Data Protection Bill to establish a new statutory inquiry into the media.
A second amendment, tabled by Labour’s deputy leader Tom Watson, would have seen publishers not signed up to a state-supported regulator pay their own and their opponent’s legal costs in data protection cases, even if they win.
But the government won yesterday’s vote by 304 votes to 295, a majority of nine, after apparently making concessions to the Democratic Unionist party (DUP). One Labour MP, John Grogan, voted with the government, while up to 18 more appeared to have stayed away.
Today's disgraceful shutdown of #Leveson2 won by 9 votes, has shown once and for all who's pulling the strings of Theresa May's sleazy, shambolic government. The DUP, and Rupert Murdoch. We live in a Murdochracy pic.twitter.com/dB1B2vXQTT
— The Prole Star (@TheProleStar) May 9, 2018
Culture Secretary Matt Hancock had the cheek to hail the result as “a great day for a free and fair press”.
Mrs May wants the press to be self-regulating, making corrupt decisions in favour of the news media all-too-easy to arrange.
That is why she wanted MPs to vote against the Labour proposals.
She told senior ministers at cabinet that plans put forward by opposition MPs would “undermine” the free press and unjustly see papers forking out crippling sums of money even if they do not lose legal cases.
Clearly she would rather force the people who have been wronged by the press to pay such crippling sums – making legal action impossible for the poor.
Mrs May has once again demonstrated where her own loyalties lie:
Not with justice, but with those who are both wealthy – and corrupt.
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No surprises here. The Sun and Murdoch’s other right wing rubbish has the once good, hard working people of our country well and truly brain washed. It seems kind of eerie to see those that were once fair minded hard working individuals blaming those who are homeless for everything wrong in this country, but, when you point out that the modern factories have around a couple of dozen workers whilst the production is done by huge computer driven machines as shown by Greg Wallace on his series about food production. As the industrialists move more and more towards staff free factories, we will see more and more people thrown out of work. That is probably why they were testing new plagues recently and , like Ebola, not too easy to control, they are now mooting that they may have to move straight to nuclear war. It simply costs too much to have conventional destruction of the now unwanted workforce!
I really dislike May but our press should remain free.
You do understand that none of the proposals that were dismissed yesterday would have stopped the press from being free to behave in a legal manner, don’t you?
Any restrictions were on ILLEGAL behaviour, and any punishments would have been for such behaviour.
Free is good but, with that freedom comes responsibility. With most of our press under the ownership of the right wing Australian, it is heavily biased in it’s reporting. That is equivalent to brain washing. You believe that is what you describe as “Free?”
I believe publication of the truth is real freedom!
There is no such thing as free press in Britain in fact with in the MSM it is all in the tory hands and people believe them there is no control on the lies they tell and truths they bend and the working class slide into slavery the MSM tell them how good it is and how lucky the are.
It’s that crazy woman lost in the ‘fields of wheat’ again and she can hear the grim reaper coming! Great picture: it gives me hope!