According to Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicol: free speech, in fact, means no more than speech from which illegal utterances are subtracted .
I will pay for the following article According to Geoffrey Robertson and Andrew Nicol: free speech, in fact, means no more than speech from which illegal utterances are subtracted … In practice, the free press is not a free press: it is what is left of the copy by laws and lawyers. W. The work is to be 14 pages with three to five sources, with in-text citations and a reference page. Moreover, the de-regulation of the media ownership structures implemented by the Communications Act 2003 has led some to argue that whilst ostensibly aiming to take media control out of the public sector, the financial ownership structures within the private sector, further impedes media freedom due to the control of powerful minorities (Frost, 2007).
The focus of this analysis is to critically evaluate the legal constraints upon media freedom within the UK. To this end it is necessary to consider the current UK position on legal protection of privacy, evaluating the efficacy of incidental protection through the law of defamation, with a particular focus on whether implementation of the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) through the Human Rights Act 1998 (HRA) has made any significant impact in clarifying the right to privacy under UK law particularly. I shall further consider issues raised by the Internet and the impact of the current legal regulatory framework on media freedom.
The issue of a legal right to privacy has come to the fore through discussions of media accountability in reporting, raising questions as to morality in journalism versus the constitutional right to freedom of speech (Reuss, 1999). The role of the media as an arm of the state of sorts, acting as an accountability safeguard against individuals in power is vital to sustaining the constitutional objective of the UK as a democracy in substance (Feldman, 1994). However, some argue that the public “right to know defence” goes beyond the purpose of accountability and effectively grants a licence to the press to invade and dissect the details of an individual’s private life with impunity (Clayton & Tomlinson, 2001. Tomlinson 2002. Reynolds v Times Newspapers [2001] 2 AC 127).