MAIL ON SUNDAY COMMENT: A disturbing new threat to our freedom 

By Mail on Sunday Comment

Published: 18:44 EST, 11 July 2015 | Updated: 19:01 EST, 11 July 2015

All truly free societies accept the essential role of the media in uncovering wrongdoing. Journalists can often pursue legitimate investigations where the police cannot do so.

The Mail on Sunday takes its duties towards the law and the safety of our nation and society very seriously, and willingly shares the results of investigations with the authorities for the general good. We are proud to do so and consider it a vital part of our purpose.

This works for the benefit of everyone. Both press and police serve the same public and share the same ultimate interest in seeing justice done and keeping our society open, safe and clean. They may reach the same aim by different methods but they are, and ought to be, allies.

In the strange atmosphere which followed the Leveson Inquiry (Lord Leveson, pictured), police forces have in many cases begun treating all contacts with journalists as suspect and potentially corrupt

In the strange atmosphere which followed the Leveson Inquiry (Lord Leveson, pictured), police forces have in many cases begun treating all contacts with journalists as suspect and potentially corrupt

That, at least, was the theory until recently. Both co-operated in the interests of all. But in the strange atmosphere which followed the Leveson Inquiry, a disturbing change has taken place.

Police forces have in many cases begun treating all contacts with journalists as suspect and potentially corrupt. They have even sought to use their investigatory powers to probe the private telephone records of journalists.

They have accused reporters of harassment when they have simply been pursuing legitimate inquiries with reasonable persistence.

 

Now, in a new and astonishing development, the Crown Prosecution Service and the police have subjected a Mail on Sunday reporter to an absurd interrogation. Following his exposure of illegal drug-taking by an eminent surgeon, he was asked insulting and ludicrous questions in which it was suggested that he might have been engaged in the supply of illegal drugs or in voyeurism.

This humiliation and intimidation of an individual by the use of state authority is an abuse of power. Nobody involved can have had the slightest real belief that these suspicions were justified or that charges could ever have been brought.

A Mail on Sunday journalist who exposed illegal drug-taking by a surgeon has been asked absurd and insulting questions which suggested he might have been engaged in the supply of illegal drugs or in voyeurism

A Mail on Sunday journalist who exposed illegal drug-taking by a surgeon has been asked absurd and insulting questions which suggested he might have been engaged in the supply of illegal drugs or in voyeurism

This is just one of the baleful effects, on our open society, of the hostility to the press which grew up after the Milly Dowler case and was turned into a major political issue by the Leveson Inquiry and the growing desire by the powerful to tame and neutralise the Fourth Estate.

It is not just politicians and the police who have joined in this general attempt to make criticism harder and complacency easier.

 
Harriet Green, former chief executive of Thomas Cook, has hired lawyers to write to the senior Labour MP, Mary Creagh, offering to ‘assist’ her ahead of a debate into the deaths of two children in Corfu

Harriet Green, former chief executive of Thomas Cook, has hired lawyers to write to the senior Labour MP, Mary Creagh, offering to ‘assist’ her ahead of a debate into the deaths of two children in Corfu

Harriet Green, former chief executive of Thomas Cook, has actually hired lawyers to write to the senior Labour MP, Mary Creagh, offering to ‘assist’ her in a planned debate on the travel company’s mishandling of the deaths of two children, Bobby and Christi Shepherd, in Corfu in 2006.

Ms Creagh, of course, is quite capable of conducting her own impartial research. The parents of the dead children are her constituents and she has been involved in the case for many years. The time was when nobody would have dreamt of offering ‘assistance’ in such a matter, especially in the form of a lawyer’s letter.

Freedom requires the unhampered ability to criticise and to expose. These unhappy episodes are a warning to us that each generation needs to learn this anew, and that threats to the liberty of the press, and of our society in general, take many and various forms.

In the past few years we have swung much too far towards restriction of criticism. It is time to swing the other way.