Last orders for the newspapers?

Must be a slow news days when there is no scandal breaking at some institution or another.  I have a hunch that all the news organisations are clearing their desks ahead of the publication tomorrow of the Leveson report into press standards.  The top billing on BBC news was the introduction of a minimum pricing for alcohol units.  Many supermarkets, such as Morrison’s - whose spokesman came on to protest the change - are opposed because they use multi-buy deals and generally low alcohol prices as loss-leaders, luring shoppers in to spend on other items as well.  So when the Morrison’s spokesman, Guy Mason, protested that alcohol only constituted 10% of a weekly shop, he was being disingenuous.  His opposing debater Professor Sir Ian Gilmour, a liver specialist, took Mason to pieces on every single smokescreen the latter threw up to protect his corporate masters and the shareholders.  Overall, although broadly supportive before (not just because of anti-social behaviour but also the silent problem of drinking too much in the home) I was left convinced that minimum pricing must be introduced, as much from being affronted by Mason’s weasel words as Sir Ian’s arguments.

In some way, this did foreshadow the Leveson report, a copy of which will be in David Cameron’s possession today.  Many on the right are absolutely terrified of what could come out in Leveson’s findings, because they fear statutory regulation will level the uneven playing surface of print media as it stands.  They know they can’t win over Leveson so they are fighting in the court of public opinion, claiming a threat to freedom of speech.  Already one member of the gutter press has spewed out a standard spurious correlation, stating that anyone who supports a new law to regulate the press is the equal of Robert Mugabe and Bashar al-Assad.  Alec Salmond, Scotland’s First Minister, is also battling with pre-emptive strikes because Rupert Murdoch, pissed off with being abandoned by Cameron, is now supporting Scottish independence (and of the course the smaller and the weaker a country, the more he can boss its elite around).  The main thing is the dissembling and disingenuous nature of all those with a vested interest in the status quo, talking about press freedom when really they don’t want the tap of right-wing literature turned off or at least reduced to a moderate dribble.

The Telegraph and The Times may not fear being collared too often under any new rules but they are trembling that the shock troops of the ‘middle’ market and gutter press will be neutered (e.g. no more comparing people to Mugabe), that the steady drip-drip of small ‘c’ becoming big ‘C’ conservatism into the nation’s psyche will be ended and people just might make up their minds for themselves.  Because all those who blather on about ‘press freedom’ are the same ones with absolute contempt for the ordinary person who they believe to be so malleable.  Those who have power - or at least think that they have – will fight tooth and nail to preserve it and screw everyone else.  The inbuilt right-wing majority in the press is under threat and that’s why big-hitting ‘maverick’ politicians such as Michael Gove and Boris Johnson have entered the fray on the side of their journalist confreres.  Whatever comes of Leveson (and governments almost never implement all the recommendations of reports they commission), it is a delight to see right-wingers genuinely scared.