ABSTRACT
It is almost a truism now to say that the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland is among the most heavily censored of all the industrial nations. The Prevention of Terrorism Act, the Official Secrets Act, the various Broadcasting Acts, the laws of evidence, libel, slander and contempt of court, Local Government Acts covering the exhibition of film and video and legislation such as the Obscene Publications Act, the Cable and Broadcasting Act, and the Video Recordings Act-added to the paranoia of a government in the mid and late 1980s increasingly embarrassed by leaks from within the civil service, the revelations of retired spies, and the use of parliamentary privilege to expose scandals and corruption (as in cases involving bank fraud allegations and the Falklands War, Belgrano affair)—all this, all these statutes and practices point to an increasing state involvement in the relationship between producers and consumers, in both news and entertainment media.
