We're happy to have a free press, our politicians are always saying so as well are they not? But they don't exactly want a free press in one sense, they want a compliant press, one that will back them and not criticise them too much. That might ignore a few inconvenient things. Which is why they were all sucking up to Rupert Murdoch so much. Owner of one of the few papers that sometimes changes sides, to it's own benefit first and foremost, which is fair enough for them, but when it becomes to it's benefit through political promises then that becomes an issue.
One of Murdochs comments the other day did make me laugh a bit, he was asked about politicians and PMs coming to him and inviting him to Downing St and everything and said that he wished they'd leave him alone. Would be easy to get them to leave you alone Rupert, although they may be doing so anyway for a bit now, but tell them you're going to leave your editors to make the decisions, they will back what policies they believe is best, and criticise what they disagree with, holding the politicians to account as they do so. But that won't happen will it, and never would.
You invite politicians in to your circle, and use the influence to benefit you, you back the winners and convince them they won because of your support. We now have the situation where our politicians believe it's more important to appease the editors and owners of newspapers rather than the people of this country and it's depressing.
You used to have the situation where the newspapers would give unqualified support to politicians, we've wound up with the politicians giving unqualified support to a newspaper group. And it's now stopped and the world moves on. Will they learn? We hope so. If not we must make our voices heard louder then before to say they must.
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