ABSTRACT
The Sun newspaper of 13 February 2012 gave former political editor Trevor Kavanagh the best part of a page to protest: ‘this witch-hunt has put us behind ex-Soviet states on press freedom’. The ‘witch hunt’ in question was the arrest of five Sun journalists accused of bribing public officials, and the former eastern bloc countries were Poland, Estonia and Slovakia, which, according to the World Press Freedom Index 2011–2012, compiled by Reporters Without Borders (RSF), all had better records on press freedom than the United Kingdom, which had dropped nine places to number twenty-eight since the last such survey.
