Reblogged from Michael Meacher MP:
The real issue raised by the Mail-Miliband saga is the accountability of the
press. Who is to hold journalists/editors/proprietors to account when they
blatantly misbehave? Of course everyone is in favour of freedom of the press,
but freedom in this context (or indeed in any situation) does not mean
unconstrained licence. As always where there are rights, they come with
responsibilities. But in today’s Britain where accountability is at its lowest
ebb for decades, who is to exercise that proper restraining influence?
Certainly not the Press Complaints Commission, a broken reed if ever there was
one. It must be one of the bitterest of ironies that the man who, as chair of
the editors’ code of practice committee, is responsible within the industry for
the ethics of the press is none other than the man who has so brazenly trashed
the rules of conduct with utter contempt. Dacre has compounded his offence by
turning down flat any idea of apology, reprinting the original offensive
article, and overseeing a culture at the Mail so vindictive that it can seek to
vilify a political leader by grossly mispresenting his father’s views – as
though his father’s views, whatever they were, have the slightest
relevance.
What redoubles the bitter irony of this situation is that Dacre, who will go
to the last ditch in defence of press self-regulation, will now in the next week
be trying with every device at his disposal to repudiate Leveson in the name of
press freedom, a principle that he has himself irreversibly tarnished. How can
a man retain his position as upholder of the morality of an industry when he
himself has so flagrantly abused it? If any one in politics had behaved with
the same unpardonable misconduct as he has shown, Dacre would be the first to be
screaming for their resignation. He should now play by his own rules.
It goes further. It now emerges that the DMGT, the company that owns both
the Mail and the Mail on Sunday, is controlled by a financial vehicle called
Rothermere Continuation Ltd and incorporated in Bermuda and administered in
Jersey. The Mail should tell us how much tax they’re failing to pay to the
British Treasury as a result of these tax have arrangements. Indeed the law
should be changed to disqualify any newspaper that is not based in Britain and
does not pay its full tax liability to the British Exchequer. But what is
stunning is that Dacre has regularly railed at tax havens as a ‘scourge’ that
“costs Britain billions”. So even apart from his amoral attitude to public
behaviour, how can a hypocrite like that maintain his posture as defender of
Middle England?
