Well hey, that sounds at least a little familiar. Ivan Lewis, shadow culture secretary is presently proposing a licensing scheme for journalists at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, which would have the power to prohibit people from doing any sort of journalism – which would have to include tweeting, blogging, and uploading pictures of stuff.
Yay, first-world democracies.
In the same way that the knee-jerk attacks on free speech we’ve seen locally have been pinioned to a single scapegoat, this seems to be very much a response to the Murdoch phone-hacking scandal – except Lewis’ proposal makes even less sense given that Murdoch didn’t break any “journalistic code”, so much as break the law.
I mean, unless you’re a fan of unenforceable, nigh-authoritarian legislation. In which case, get in, Labour.
[Source: Guardian]
