The power of the press has, almost from nowhere, become one of the defining leitmotifs
of this Parliament. Only two years ago, the Telegraph exerted that power to (partially) clean out British politics, and won general acclaim in the process. But now, it seems, the media is more
likely to have its actions attacked, or at least questioned and contained. Whether it is the Press Complaint Commissions’s censure today for
those clandestine Cable tapes, or the continuing hoo-hah over super-injunctions and their infraction, there is a question hanging unavoidably in the air: how much does the public have a right to
know?
This is a precarious political issue, not least because of the immediate problems it has thrust upon the coalition. The Cable situation was itself, of course, a question of public interest versus private concern — and it had ramifications for another matter of media power, Rupert Murdoch’s takeover of BSkyB.
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