Boris Johnson has nailed his true blue colours firmly to the anti-regulation camp as a war of words develops over how to manage the press in the wake of the Leveson inquiry.
This puts the London mayor at odds with the Labour party which has pledged to back Lord Leveson’s decision, even if it calls for strict new regulatory regime.
At issue is the desire of a group of celebrities to prevent salacious gossip from their private lives permeating the front pages, to do so they’ve formed a campaign group called ‘Hacked Off’ which is arguing that journalists must become accredited professionals.
Writing in his blog for the Telegraph Johnson wailed: “You can’t ‘strike journalists off’, as if they were accountants or lawyers or gynaecologists. They aren’t a profession: they are a great pulsating rabble of people who are distinguished only by our desire – I will not say our ability – to write any old thing for any kind of ephemeral publication. Anyone can be a journalist. You just have to start a blog, break a few stories, and bingo, you are a household name.”
Warming to his theme Johnson draws parallels with the heavy handed state dictum’s enforced by regimes such as the Chinese Communist party, which gags its press from discussing controversial issues.
Johnson argued: “… there is plenty of existing statute to prevent them from hacking people’s phones; and if members of the media are found to have been bribing public officials, then the law is clear: bang ’em up – the bribers and the bribed.”