Are we bothered?

In describing his relationship with the press, Thomas Jefferson said that he had been ‘used as the property of the newspapers, a fair mark for every man’s dirt’. Yet the third President of the United States was also a zealous champion of press freedom. ‘Were it left to me to decide whether we should have a government without newspapers, or newspapers without a government,’ he wrote in 1787, ‘I should not hesitate for a moment to prefer the latter.’ It is safe to say, on the basis of his speech at Reuters this week, that Tony Blair does not share Jefferson’s analysis.

The outgoing Prime Minister has been at his most impressive when phlegmatic and philosophical about the media. Yet on Tuesday he struck an altogether more captious note, first declaring that he did not want to apportion blame, and then comparing the media to a ‘feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits’.