The Tories should think again on targeting Netflix

If you want to understand the curious attitude of our government towards media freedom, look at two provisions in the draft Media Bill, published yesterday. One is refreshingly liberal; the other curmudgeonly and authoritarian.

First, the good news. The Bill reads the last rites over the Leveson Report of 2012. A worrying document embodying lofty patrician contempt for the popular press, this had called for highly intrusive controls over it. This included closer supervision of what journalists were allowed to do and editors to publish, an increase in damages for breach of privacy and a noticeable tightening of the dead hand of data protection on newspaper information-gathering. And, to cap it off, all papers worth the name should submit to a semi-official regulator with expansive powers to write a code of practice, fine newspapers for breaking it (even if they had not acted illegally) and impose corrections and apologies. True, Leveson reluctantly stopped short of demanding legal compulsion, but he called for none-too-subtle pressure in the shape of a punitive legal costs rule for any papers which failed to sign up (essentially making them pay the court costs of anyone who sued them, even if the claim failed).