Thanks for the a bit more balance MaidMarian – it seems everyone else prefers hyperbole.

That’s an unfair characterisation, you’ve backed a plan by the government to increase it’s powers of intrusion and control.

The reaction has seen bloggers from all parts of the political spectrum respond critically to your endorsement (which says something in its self).

Unity provided a very good and practical way for curbing the problems on LC without giving the government such a boon to their propaganda options.

I wonder what people would say if they were the ones smeared as terrorists by newspapers without being first charged or convicted by one.

David T – I’m referring to the number of people arrested and named compared to those who actually got charged.

It is an interesting article on a complex issue.

The slightly bigger question to my mind is how have we got to a place where the government has to act? Why have the media dumbed down (for want of a better turn of phrase) to the point where ‘news’ can be anything from disinterested presentation of substantive events to total cobblers?

I certainly see where Rumbold (3) is coming from, but is there not an element here that the press are being reigned in because they are just asking to be? And the double standard is unpalatable.

It was particularly distasteful getting a lecture from Paul Dacre on the subject of protecting rights/privacy and the Human Rights Act. That felt like being lectured to by Jordan on putting my chest away.

Stark reality is that freedom of the press as currently practised looks suspiciously close to being no more than the freedom to dumb down in order to sell more copy. Fair enough, but no one should be kidding them self that somehow that is the same thing as freedom of the press as an intrinsic component of a healthy democracy. Whose ever interest the media hysterics are in, it does not appear to be the public.

Self regulation has failed to protect the public or drive up standards. Hysterical sells. I am not a big fan of more regulation on the media, but I certainly wont shed too many tears for the hacks either.

You need to regain your cynical eye Sunny.

First they come for the newspapers, next the bloggers?