ABSTRACT
At the heart of British journalism lies the principle of self regulation and the celebration of the ‘free press’. Our democracy is supposedly the fruit of centuries of struggle for freedom of oppression (Winston 2005) with the mass selling press which emerged in the second half of the nineteenth century free from direct government and political controls seen as the culmination of this process. Interestingly, Prime Minister Tony Blair suggested just before standing down in 2007 that, in the light of media convergence, newspapers should face the same regulation as broadcasters who are subject to statutory regulation (Rose 2007). Such a move would have completely upset long-held principles of media freedom: not surprisingly, one of the first statements of the new Gordon Brown government was to reject the Blair suggestion.
