In the western civilization, freedom of the press is generally considered to be a good thing. And, of course, to a large extent, it is, especially when it means freedom from government control and interference. However, having lived in the United Kingdom for five years now, I can tell you that unconstrained and complete freedom of the press may not necessarily be a good thing.
According to Reporters Sans Frontieres’s annual index of press freedom, the United Kingdom currently ranks 24th in the world in terms of press freedom, with the 2007 index of 8.25. In comparison, the United States ranks 48th in the world, with the 2007 index of 14.50. (The smaller the index, the freer the press.) It is true, as the RSF indices suggest, that the British press are much freer and operate under fewer constraints than the American press. Unfortunately, however, one of the constraints that the British press are free of is the truth.
Having dealt extensively with newspaper reporters on both sides of the Atlantic, I have over the years felt major differences between how American and British newspapers operate. In the US, something newsworthy happens and newspapers rush to the incident (literally and figuratively) to be the first one to report it. In the UK, newspapers make things up and hope that enough readers will believe them and they eventually become true in their minds. In other words, the British press are so free and unconstrained that they are largely unaccountable for whether what they report is true.
By the American standards, all mainstream British newspapers are tabloids like the National Enquirer. The difference is that most Americans know that what they read in the pages of the National Enquirer is entertaining fiction. Most British people don’t know the same about the Guardian. True, all American newspapers have their own ideological bias and opinions, but they are at least accountable for what they say. If it turns out that what they have reported is not factually true, American newspapers are required to apologize for the error and retract the erroneous coverage, and their reputation suffers greatly as a result.
I had known all of this from my own personal experience, and the experience of my academic friends and colleagues, about whom the British newspapers have often made things up in their reporting. But I was amused to discover recently that this is the official position of the British government.
The British Home Office publishes Life in the United Kingdom: A Journey to Citizenship. It is a small booklet that all immigrants must read and study in preparation for the UK citizenship test, as all questions in the test come from the material covered in the booklet. There is a chapter in it that discusses all major British institutions, and a small section in the chapter on the media. It says:
The UK has a free press, meaning that what is written in newspapers is free from government control. Newspaper owners and editors hold strong political opinions and run campaigns to try and influence government policy and public opinion. As a result it is sometimes difficult to distinguish fact from opinion in newspaper coverage (p. 49).
In other words, you can’t believe what you read in British newspapers presented as facts. It is difficult to imagine that the US State Department would publish an official statement similar to this about the American newspapers.
The press should not be entirely free. There should be some constraints placed on them, and one of the major constraints should be the truth.
