Why I've decided to sign up to the campaign for real press freedom

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2014/mar/16/hacked-off-safeguard-truly-free-press

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Information is power. It is the route to hearts and minds. Information frames what we do, how we think and vote. It is fundamental to the operation of our societies and our lives. All leaders, in the public or private sector, know that any influence they have over information is crucial to their leadership, even to their hold on power. The media – the means of information transmission – are thus fundamental to power and are, inevitably and necessarily, political.

In a utopian democracy, concerned citizens would have multiple sources of information so that they could guarantee that what they were told was true – and use it against private and public power alike. Integrity and honesty of information would be built into the system. We don't, however, live in Utopia. We live in a democracy with insecure governments keen to minimise all bad news. Equally, those governments are keen to please dense concentrations of private media which are no less aware of how control of information provides political and social influence for them, influence they do not want to lose.

The argument in favour of the freedom of the press, set to become more intense this week as the campaigning group Hacked Off publishes another letter arguing for tougher "charter"-backed self-regulation with yet more signatories (including mine), is generally pitched as the case for freedom from the state and freedom to hold the state to account. Any state press regulation is by definition a back-door means of extending state control and a limitation on freedom. Holding the state to account and limiting its tentacles are a crucial part of the story, but only a part. The case for a free press is larger. It is about how to ensure as much true information as possible is disseminated in a free society.

Governments, obviously, are the main suspects. But private disseminators of information are not disinterested guardians of the public good. They, too, have political and social agendas. Nor are they guaranteed to behave ethically and professionally. Moreover, private power has become steadily more potent, more unaccountable and more willing than ever to exert overt political force.

At its peak, before the closure of the News of the World, the old News International had become, in effect, a state within a state. Cameron met Rupert Murdoch or his executives 26 times in the 15 months after the 2010 general election, as the manoeuvres to take over BSkyB intensified. He was only behaving as Blair and Brown had done. Senior police officers offered information to his papers and enjoyed favours in return. Phone-hacking appears to have been widespread at the News of the World.

Private lives have been trashed and abused. Wrong information and disinformation have been knowingly published – about celebrities, criminal inquiries and major institutions such as the European Union or child protection agencies – with no redress or apology. There has been too little holding truth to power. Finally, when it emerged in July 2011 that the mobile phone of the murdered girl Milly Dowler had been hacked on behalf of the News of the World, the dam broke. Lord Justice Leveson was asked to inquire into "the culture, practices and ethics of the press".

He defined his task as solving the who-guards-the-guardians? question: how to stop the private state-within-a-state syndrome and enlarge the flow of uncontaminated information. The more the press adheres to decent standards of conduct, wins trust and offers redress, the more it will gain access to information the public needs to know.

We had experience of this last week with the Observer's Co-op story: people only leak documents such as board papers on executive pay to news organisations they trust, as the interlocutor on this story made clear to us. Equally, Edward Snowden would never have leaked the scale of US and UK security service surveillance to any British news organisation. (Full declaration: I am a member of the Scott Trust that owns both the Guardian and Observer). Trust matters – and for the British press it is in diminishing supply.

Leveson proposed the press establish its own regulatory body to address its evident weakness. Crucially, he felt the body needed to be held to account by a recognition panel backed by law to ensure it properly discharged its duties and privileges. He suggested Ofcom could perform the role. That felt too much like an arm of the state. So parliament came up with a modest recognition panel backed by royal charter to do the job, the same principle on which universities and the BBC were founded. It even proposes that only a two-thirds majority in parliament can change it.

The initial industry consensus that it could work with most of Leveson, forged after the publication of the report, has collapsed. Instead, the industry, minus the Guardian group, the Independent and Financial Times, has worked behind closed doors to create its own regulator. It is defying parliament because it will not seek recognition from a "state-backed" or "state-sponsored" charter-backed recognition panel, thus allowing it to build a system much like the discredited Press Complaints Commission (PCC) it will replace. There will be limited investigative powers and little capacity for arbitration apart from exceptional cases authorised by its industry paymasters. In fairness, it does offer a whistleblower function to protect journalists, the potential to impose fines and it is committed to more open governance and appointments procedures.

It does not address the key question: who, in a world in which we want as much honest information as possible, guards the guardians? The answer is, if the industry has its way, the industry itself. But we know this fails. On the other hand, is a royal charter-backed recognition panel the thin end of an aggressive state wedge, as even the World Association of Newspapers and News Publishers will warn tomorrow?

No university worries that it is incorporated under a state-backed royal charter. Rather, a charter protects academic freedoms. A charter-backed Independent Press Standards Organisation would offer the same for journalism and the flow of free information. Accusations that this ends centuries of press freedom hide an uglier truth. The British press does not want to be the provider of trusted information for citizens in the public square: rather, it wants to be free to shape the square and the character of the information it supplies, with as little redress and accountability as possible.

That's not press freedom: that is arbitrary press power. It's for that reason I have joined a growing number of other writers and signed this week's letter campaigning for better. So, I hope, will you.