Press regulation in the age of fake news | Letters

I am grateful to Paul Chadwick (Open door, 15 May) for his defence of professional journalism in the age of fake news. He describes succinctly the symbiotic relationship between fact-based institutional journalism and representative democracy. In the prosperous democracies of Europe and North America, we are already struggling to maintain the health of our political systems in the face of fake news disseminated deliberately online. A new breed of politician is eager to exploit the impact of technological change on the news organisations upon which we have long relied to speak truth to power.

However, your readers’ editor overlooks an additional threat to professional journalism’s ability to serve democracy. This stems from the argument that state-sanctioned regulation, as proposed by the Leveson inquiry and promoted by organisations including Hacked Off and Impress, can improve journalism. This was always naive. To continue to promote it in an era when some politicians prove daily their enthusiasm for fakery and their hostility to a shared agenda of verifiable facts, is monstrously foolish. Press freedom, entirely untrammelled by external regulation, is now more vital than ever.
Professor Tim Luckhurst
Professor of journalism, University of Kent

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