Free and Regulated Press

This thought-provoking book provides a systematic, philosophically-grounded reconceptualisation of press freedom and press regulation. In a major departure from orthodox norms, the book argues that press freedom and coercive independent press regulation are not mutually exclusive; that newspapers could be made to compensate their victims, through regulation, without jeopardising their free speech rights; that their perceived public watchdog status does not exempt them; and, ultimately, that mandatory press regulation is not unconstitutional. In doing so, the book questions our most deeply-held, intuitive beliefs about the press and its role in society.Why do we say the printed press has a duty to act as a public watchdog when there is no legally enforceable apparatus by which to ensure it does? Why does government constantly recommend that the press regulate itself when history shows this model always fails? Why do victims of press malfeasance continue to suffer needlessly? By deconstructing the accepted view of press freedom and mandatory regulation, this book shows that both are deeply misunderstood. The prevailing notion that the press must serve the public is an empty relic of Victorian ideology that is both philosophically incoherent and legally unjustifiable. The press is obliged to make good, not do good.

The merits of this volume are numerous. The “liberation” of the press from its public interest obligations promotes purity of doctrine, which can focus individual legal systems even more on the freedom of debate in public affairs. At least as important is the parallel statement that the reader has a responsibility to be properly informed and cannot expect it from a press regulatory body, and that the democratic public sphere is thus made up of the efforts of many participants readers, advertisers, journalists, and publishers. The recognition of the multifaceted nature of the “freedom of the press” is also an important insight, as a result of which it may be worth rethinking some of the theoretical foundations of the freedom of the press. In addition, the volume argues convincingly that “coercive”—that is, statutory—regulation in the field of the press is not incompatible with protecting freedom of the press. The author thus successfully shakes up “dead dogmas”. Mill himself would be proud., Wragg's forensic examination of the fuzziness surrounding the concept of press freedom makes the book a must-buy for university reading lists., This is an important book. It is a fine example of the contribution to legal thinking that only academic writers can make. Wragg fulfils his promise to rethink ideas to which the courts and other commentators repeatedly refer, but which they do not explain., A novel, critical, and comprehensive reassessment of the normative underpinnings of press freedom … A Free and Regulated Press will undoubtedly have a major influence on scholarship (and perhaps even policy) on the rationale for and boundaries of press freedom. At the very least, it raises the bar that needs to be met by those who seek to defend the classical normative conception of press freedom and the justifications for its protection from any form of regulation whatsoever., Wragg’s book—impressive in both scope and depth of analysis—is set to make a timely, novel, and much-needed contribution to the international press-regulation literature and to spur important debates about the basic values that undergird our thinking in the field. In a scholarly space in which much of even the best work is rooted in outcome preference or policy particulars, this manuscript offers a refreshing intellectual integrity and tackles the much larger and more important task of examining the core philosophical foundations of our most pressing media-freedom questions. I anxiously await it as a reference that I am sure I will cite with frequency, and I know for certain I am not alone in this assessment.

Paul Wragg is Professor of Law at the University of Leeds.