how much is free worth?

Says Raphael Behr

The argument, if I’ve understood it correctly, is that a genre of wild irreverence is indigenous to British newspapers and therein lies their unique genius. If it weren’t for their capacity to offend and behave appallingly, they couldn’t reasonably be expected to hold the powerful to account. The grubby hacks who sometimes cross the threshold of decency and propriety are precious gadflies that prick the vanity of the establishment. Take away their licence to be bad and they cannot properly do good. It is a neat syllogism: a free press does wicked things; a press that is not free cannot perform its democratic functions properly, therefore, in order to perform its functions properly, the press must be partly wicked.

Indeed: the logic here is that since the pediatrician cures the child he has the right to whip his cock out in front of the mother. But the phrase about democratic functions ignores the fact that, taken as a whole, the British press is a major driver of authoritarianism. It’s career death for an aspiring politician to be written off as ‘soft on’ something; and announcing a crackdown is a cheap way to get yourself some approving headlines, except of course if its thought that you’re not cracking down enough. And no-one ever kept the press ‘onside’ by saying that addicts might commit less crime if they could legally get hold of drugs. If you want the freedom the press are howling about to be spread more widely through policy and legislation – if you want more open borders, an approach to terrorism that doesn’t seek to be a terrorist force multiplier, answers to crime other than more prison a rational approach to drug policy and all the rest of it, then, for the most part, the press is your enemy. The fact that politicians are prepared to stand up to it even to the extent of serving up a Leveson themed dog's breakfast arguably raises the chance that, someday, the politicians might not be afraid to legislate for greater freedom.  If the politics and media gangs get into a protracted war of attrition, all the better.

Still, that’s obviously wildly optimistic in a political framework which tends to select for success partly through authoritarianism, which again raises the question of how this selection process became ingrained, and who put the incentives in place. I don’t believe any of the hype coming from the punditocracy about how the new Royal Charter With A Bit of Law In It threatens the very essence of our democracy, ie their license to do as they please.  But it’s a nice inversion of an old cliché: the children are eating the counter-revolution.

Comments

[flyingrodent]

I've been trying and giving up on writing this post for a week, and you've done it at a quarter of the length, with about 100% less cursing.

Well done.

[alle]

Off-topic request:

I need suggestions for good books and essays, ranging from not-too-dull political science to popular history, memoirs and possibly even novels, about totalitarianism.

The focus is on those really spectacular modern-era dictatorships, the mechanics of a 20th century totalitarian regime, factional games inside such governments, the way to construct a cult of personality, the logic behind purges and mass terror, darkly amusing historical anecdotes, grim tales from survivors, etc. You know, forty pounds of human eyeballs kind of stuff.

Thought this might be the place to ask.

[Barry Freed]

I'm almost embarrassed to recommend it because I've yet to read it (it's on the list) but Bloodlands sounds like it would fit the bill nicely.

[dominic]

Bloodlands is a very moving and comprehensive catalogue of horrors. But it is not as original as Snyder thinks, and it adds nothing to debates about how to explain what happened. I'd skip it, frankly, except that it does have some of the stuff alle is looking for, especially the grim tales.

[Nick L]

Fascists and the Dark Side of Democracy, both by Michael Mann, might be useful. They don't go in for the gory anecdote, but they are well-written and go into the details about the social bases of support for fascism and mass murder in the C20th. He's pretty good at explaining intricate social mechanisms whilst avoiding making the discussion too dry.

[Richard J]

and it adds nothing to debates about how to explain what happened.

I can see where you're coming from, but I'd slightly disagree on that - by bringing out the ethnic element to Soviet persecution in the 30s, it's a twist on the totalitarianism thesis by showing that both the USSR and Germany had an obsession with traitorous ethnic elements (as opposed to being all about class in the former case.)

[Guano]

"If it weren’t for their capacity to offend and behave appallingly, they couldn’t reasonably be expected to hold the powerful to account."

You, and Behr, are right: this is a bogus argument. How can the British press be holding the powerful to account if newspaper editors and prime ministers are having country suppers together? What is possible, though, is that British newspapers may fail to adapt to the new regime; they may just not know how to survive without being offensive.

[ajay]

I'm sure there's a word for the fallacy of "some X are Y, therefore all X are Y". Amis' Paintbrush, perhaps. The counterargument would be that, yes, some mosques are indeed hotbeds of terrorism, but other mosques are providing a valuable service in terms of letting people worship how and where they want. So wideranging restrictions, based on justifiable anger against Rebekah the Hook-Handed Mullah, are also going to catch a whole load of other mosques of the al-Anrusbridger variety that are either harmless or positively beneficial.

[jamie]

alle: James' the Death of Mao is very good on factional infighting and its cascading consequences. Mao's Last Revolution is where I'd go for all of your requirements in one place.

ajay: sort of proves my point, in a way. There does seem to be quite an overlap between the papers angriest over press freedom and the ones most willing to use it for the purposes of Muslim baiting.

[Guano]

What name should be given to the fallacy of "Law X stops me delivering magic ponies"?

[dsquared]

By way of analogy, nearly all the people who warned anyone about the financial crisis when it could have made a difference were working in the (regulated) equity research or (regulated) investment tipsheet industries; the (unregulated) ratings agencies missed the boat mightily.

[Cian]

Ajay: Yeah but for the analogy to work the vast majority of Mosques would need to be hotbeds of terrorism.

And would the Guardian really be affected by this?

[Jib Halyard]

"If it weren’t for their capacity to offend and behave appallingly, they couldn’t reasonably be expected to hold the powerless to account."

There. fixed.

[Igor Belanov]

I think Jib has hit the nail on the head there. Press freedom is a complete smokescreen for those squealing most about it. They prefer easy targets.

[ajay]

Yeah but for the analogy to work the vast majority of Mosques would need to be hotbeds of terrorism.

But the vast majority of newspapers are not hotbeds of phone-hacking. I wonder which is bigger: the percentage of journalists who think that hacking Milly Dowler's phone is OK, or the percentage of British Muslims who think that suicide bombing is OK? (The latter being 16%).

And would the Guardian really be affected by this?

I know which way I'd bet.

[ajay]

By way of analogy, nearly all the people who warned anyone about the financial crisis when it could have made a difference were working in the (regulated) equity research or (regulated) investment tipsheet industries; the (unregulated) ratings agencies missed the boat mightily.

The (unregulated) ratings agencies were in fact regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

[dsquared]

The (unregulated) ratings agencies were in fact regulated by the Securities and Exchange Commission.

Only for record-keeping, having internal processes to guard against conflicts of interest (the SEC only regulated the processes, not the conflicts of interest), and maintaining a list of recognised rating agencies (onto which all incumbents were grandfathered, and to which no entrants were admitted until after the crisis!). The SEC was specifically banned from regulating rating methodologies.

In other words it was as toothless as a broken comb being used to clean a set of denture blanks by the Press Complaints Commission. And even those "limited" powers were only introduced in 2006. Before 2006, the sum total of the SEC's role in regulating ratings agencies was to determine which ones would be considered "Nationally Recognised Statistical Rating Organisations". The process for gaining NRSRO status was called a "No Action Letter", with all the rigorous scrutiny that implies.

[ajay]

So you're saying that the credit rating agencies were regulated with the same unflinching rigour and scrupulous care as, say, AIGFP. Or the mortgage securitisation market. Or the Libor submissions process. Or the UK consumer financial products market.
Can't argue with that!

And I am really not sure about your conclusion that being (slightly) regulated made it more likely that you would get it right about the financial crisis. Lots of completely unregulated people were getting it right about the crisis (like, for example, Nouriel Roubini) and lots of regulated people were getting it wrong (like Chuck Prince and Stan O'Neal).

[john b]

"The latter being 16%"

...if you take a fairly odious push-poll and lie about the results, yes.