Come on you Daily Mail supporters

I think it was actually Voltaire's biographer summing up Voltaire's attitudes so suppose it is Voltaire in a way!

Freedom of speech is a valuable ideal to try an uphold but there are always provisos! One is speech that sets out to stir up violence against an individual /group ..hence incitement laws.

I suppose it is like any 'right' .. it comes with responsibilities. Sadly some do not take their responsibilities seriously and provide fire to those who want to curb freedom of speech. If all of the press expressed their different opinions, views and ideals without vitriol and emotive personal jibes nobody would be calling for a curb on them!

anno and bags It wasn't Voltaire himself but S. G. Tallentyre summarising Voltaire's opinion in The Friends of Voltaire.

Whenever there is talk of curtailing freedom of the press I think of a time during the cold war when I was still very young but beginning to understand the problems people in the USSR were having if they dared to disagree with The State and the state controlled press. It's a good memory to have from my teenage years. Not preventing dissent (even when you find it hateful or, in today's favourite word, 'offensive') is essential to freedom and freedom is essential to democracy.

So are you saying Bags, that there should be no constraints on the press? That it is OK to misrepresent, distort, lie, to make a story? Is it OK to doorstep people, gatecrash memorial services, listen to messages on the mobile phones of murder victims?
Are there no limits to the freedom of the press? Genuinely interested to know where you would draw the line.

No, I am not saying that, mamie. There are constraints already on criminal press activity such as libel. There is an argument, which I haven't yet heard countered effectively (logically), that we have adequate laws in place already to deal with such things as you mention.

"Gatecrashing" memorial services is an emotive way of saying that there is a reporter at the service. The writer in the Spectator says this is quite common. Aren't church services usually public?

I don't like the things you mention any more than you do, but I don't think they are necessarily criminal offences. Not everything that disgusts us is criminal, nor should be.

I am as shocked as anyone by the intrusiveness of the gutter press, but I don't think state censorship of the press is the way to deal with it. I am convinced that state censorship is a bad idea because it is inherently dangerous. Just think USSR and other dictatorships.

The dead can be libelled , no law to protect their name, and it wasn't a Church service it was a private memorial service held in a hospital not in a public building.

There was nothing the reporters could claim was in the public interest by questioning family members about a man who died years ago whilst in a memorial service for a man who died a few months ago.

I support freedom of speech but not freedom of gutter press and we have too much gutter press now

Penstemmon and absent, I sit corrected.

Thanks Bags. As ever, you put into words just what I would say if I had your erudition. I agree with all you say.

I also find the hypocrisy of Alistair Campbell nauseating. He and Damian McBride were prime exponents of the gutter press, yet Campbell is now pontificating against the DM.

The article asks if what the DM wrote about Ralph Milliband was different, essentially, from what people on the 'other side' said about Margaret Thatcher at her funeral. The article seemed to conclude that there was no essential difference. Is there a difference?

I'm not defending either, by the way, and what I think about Margaret Thatcher and Ralph (or Ed) Milliband is irrelevant.

The DM gave Ed Milliband the right of reply, which he did admirably. People are then free to make up their own minds about his father. I know which 'side' I find more convincing.

I agree with you absolutely, Bags. And with Gagagran about the mealy-mouthed hypocrisy flying around.

I don't actually think Memorial Services are in fact open to the public. They are not acts of worship and people are usually invited to attend. While no one would take exception to outsiders wishing to pay their respects, the presence of a journalist can only be construed as intrusive.

OK. But is intruding such as that a crime? If so, we will have laws to deal with it. If not, do we need to make it a crime to gatecrash?

As I said before, I am not trying to justify bad behaviour. That isn't the point. The point is that state censorship is wrong and not just wrong but dangerous. No amount of justified outrage at awful newspaper articles and awful journalist behaviour changes that.

I think one has to detach one's emotions from the issues. If that sounds pompous or anything else undesirable... well <shrug>

Offence if not criminal is the price of freedom. Offence if criminal will be dealt with by the rule of law.

This memorial service was held at Guy's Hospital, presumably because that would have been where the uncle had worked. It wouldn't have been open to the public.

Did anytime see 'Have I Got News For You?' tonight? Very interesting revelations about the owners of the Daily Mail and their support for the Blackshirts and the Nazis as against his Ed Milliband's father fought for Britain in WW2.

his how

There's been plenty about that elsewhere for a day or two, which is good.

Re gatecrashing and privacy, the issue is still whether the bad behaviour of some reporters justifies press censorship by the state or whether we just need stricter laws for dealing with the bad behaviour and slinging the culprits in jail or fining them.

Good night all

It's about decency Bags.

If Ed Milliband wishes to govern this country he would expect his background to be gone over with a fine tooth comb. That's politics. You dish it, you take it. He knows that and all this righteous indignation from the Left with Alistair Campbell on lead vocals is hypocrisy, we all know that.

No problem with the Left seizing the opportunity to grab the sanctified moral high ground, distressed and shocked at the DM. The Right would have pulled the same trick had The Guardian attacked Cameron's family. Politics. No one really believes it will make one iota of difference.

I was interested to read about Ed's Marxist father, particularly after the Labour conference where Ed and his Union paymasters seemed to aspire to take us back to Old Labour. God Forbid.

Anyone remember Stephen Lawrence? The DM picturing his killers on their front page? Their concerted campaign to bring them to justice?

What was the front page of the page of the Socialist Worker newspaper after Margaret Thatcher's death? Rejoice Thatcher's Dead. Tasteful.

Quite agree with you thatbags about censorship of the press, dangerous and not required. I want to know what our masters are up to and if the press libels anyone, there is redress in law.

try this

You don't need to know what a politician's father did or didn't say or do. No-one is that influenced by their parents.

"Anyone remember Stephen Lawrence? "

Err yes. I think we might do.

j08 it was the DM who pictured the suspects in the Stephen Lawrence case under the headline 'Killers' and invited them to sue. They were instrumental in getting justice for the Lawrence family.

Aka Ok, I'm hated apparently.

I have just written a very long response to Bags based upon my own first hand experience of the press - and somehow lost it at the point of posting.

In brief:
Winning libel damages when lies and distortions have been published has the same effect as shutting the stable door after the horse has bolted. The damage has already occurred and no amount of money, no two lines of apology on page 27 or wherever, can take the lies back or undo the heartache and distress caused.
I know this from painful experience. The law, as it stands, is not an effective deterrent and I have no faith in a self regulated press.