Eye of frog, ‘dab’ of statute

It’s good to know that the end of press mendacity may be at hand.  Well, the press will always be loathed, but with the phone hacking claims extending to the Mirror Group, only a press lackey could complain about elected representatives tackling the unelected power of newspapers.  The same argument against is that used by gun nut survivalists – the looming tyranny of government, however democratic.  We are not talking about the end of press freedom per se, but the end of press freedom to destroy the lives of the famous (J.K. Rowling) and the ordinary (Christopher Jeffries), plus with its in-built right-wing majority, to propagandise hard conservative values (one cannot say the Conservatives, as almost all the press right now eulogise UKIP). 
Tory MPs, as over House of Lords reform, are advised to vote tomorrow non principle, but on realpolitik.  And the journalistic right claim to have values!  They bleat that the Americans would be appalled.  Firstly, so what; who cares what the Americans think.  Secondly, Americans have always looked down their noses at the British press, believing them to be (outside of The National Enquirer) far more scurrilous and salacious than their own stable.  But how we lecture regimes like Russia, Zimbabwe and Iran twitter British right-wing journalists (see what they did there, falsely conflating this legislation with authoritarianism).  Yeah, because lecturing these regimes on their lack of press freedom was always so successful in the past.  This is beyond satire.