ABSTRACT
This chapter shows how, following a critical incident in British journalism, journalists and stakeholders in the country sought to delineate the boundaries of press freedom and regulation in the debate that followed the phone hacking scandal and the Leveson Inquiry. It suggests an understanding of the boundary work on press freedom. The neoliberal conceptualisation of press freedom is hegemonic in discourses about media policy. At the time of writing, press freedom in the United Kingdom was based on the human right to free expression. Protection of press freedom by the state must be accompanied by a commensurate protection of the right to freedom of expression by individuals. The concept of paradigm repair is also employed because media representation of the press is often characterized by paradigm repair strategies. Multiple sub-interpretive spheres can arise from differences and similarities in the press’s interpretations of journalistic paradigms, such as press freedom, objectivity, and news in the printed format.
