As politicians fret about the Leveson inquiry and struggle to square the circle of defending a media free from state interference that some argue needs to be better protected by the state from unethical corporate politicking and domination, there is great value in us returning to examine Jesus’ engagement with the a major medium of communication in his day: the Temple. Keith Hebden argues that across the chasm of the centuries, lessons in confronting power and 'domination systems' are there to be learned if we pay proper attention.
Tonight, as the Lords vote on Leveson amendments, I have been taking part in a lively discussion, with expert input, hosted jointly by the two National Union of Journalists branches in Edinburgh.
The disagreement about Leveson purports to be a debate about 'press freedom'. In those terms, it is monstrously distorted. Powerful interests are disingenuously trying to portray as lingering 'state control' a reasonable attempt to give an arms-length independent regulatory framework legal underpinning as a matter of last resort.
The pressure group Hacked Off, which wants to see the full implementation of key elements of the Leveson inquiry into the operation and ethics of the press in Britain, has denounced last last week's press industry statement on the matter as "deeply misleading".
As the old joke goes, the way to confuse Daily Mail readers is to tell them that asylum-seekers are the natural enemies of homosexuals. This wouldn't have worked last week, when the Supreme Court ruled in favour of two gay asylum-seekers, giving the right-wing media the opportunity to go into full scaremongering mode, firing off prejudiced comments about two groups handily combined into one.