by Rab Bruce’s Spider

The news that the UK has slipped further down the rankings in the latest Press Freedom Index has been met by cries of anguish from some journalists bemoaning the fate of their profession, and it must be said that the UK Government’s stance on freedom of expression is growing more and more authoritarian as they seek to crush dissent and prevent anyone obtaining or publicising information which shows them in a bad light. The latest ranking, a drop to 40th place, is a sad, if unsurprising, indictment of Tory policies.

But another question must surely be why they are adopting this approach. It may well simply be their automatic attraction to suppressing any possible opposition, but the reality is that it is not so much freedom of the Press which is the problem in the UK; it is the bias of the Press. Freedom of expression should be everyone’s right, but the UK newspapers regularly abuse that right by printing stories which are often outright lies. And the reason they are doing it is to demonise any opposition to Right Wing tory rule. The SNP and anyone associated with them have been targets for years, and Jeremy Corbyn is now being subjected to the same treatment. The Press are, in fact, doing the Tories’ job for them.

So, while the steady slide down the Press Freedom Index ranking is deplorable, we shouldn’t confuse the freedom of the Press to report stories and voice opinions with the content of the stories and opinion pieces they actually publish. There is a difference and, while the UK Government is failing to uphold the principles of democracy, the Press themselves are failing the UK public without any help from anyone else.