Ministers will damage press freedom with proposals that would, if enacted, intimidate journalists into docility
In the modern state, it is obvious that some government information should remain secret. However, the power to conceal should not be open to abuse so that a government is protected from censure or humiliation, or able to suppress wrongdoing. Yet that is exactly where the state could end up if plans for a new system of secrecy without safeguards are enacted.
In its suggested reforms to the four Official Secrets Acts, the Home Office proposes an extremely hostile environment for journalism. The plans would make it easier to prosecute whistleblowers and more difficult to defend disclosing information that the government says is damaging to national security. Making journalists and sources liable in criminal law will surely deter them from revealing that the government has been up to something disastrous for British interests, or morally appalling, or both. Such plans ought to send a shudder down the spine of all those who care about the public’s right to know.
