Do We Need More Regulation of the News Media?

In Britain public outrage over the hacking of people's mobile-phone voicemail messages, by investigators hired by newspapers, continues to grow. At first it was the royal family and celebrities whose messages were found to have been intercepted. As the number of cases multiplied, the News of the World, the Sunday tabloid at the centre of the scandal, found it ever harder to maintain its line that just one “rogue reporter” was to blame. Now, to widespread disgust, there are reports that the messages of murdered schoolgirls, and of victims of the 2005 terrorist attacks in London, may also have been intercepted. On Thursday, as advertisers continued to desert the tabloid, its owners, News International, announced that it would be closed down.

America's news media have come under heavy criticism for the way they reported the trial of Casey Anthony, a woman accused of murdering her daughter. Before the verdict Ms Anthony suffered an electronic lynching from news organisations and amateur sleuths on Twitter and Facebook. The jury, having heard all the evidence in detail, this week acquitted her. Britain's traditional news media are supposedly bound by strict laws that curtail their reporting of active criminal cases. But they frequently test the limits. The Daily Mirror and Sun are being prosecuted for contempt of court, over their reporting of a murder case in which suspicion briefly and wrongly fell on the victim's landlord.

But you can't regulate Facebook and Twitter, comes the response. Look at what happened recently when masses of Twitter users defied a court injunction against naming a prominent footballer accused of adultery. However, others might say that you can regulate any form of communication, if you have the will to do so: ask the Chinese. Even without calling for draconian censorship of online chatter, it could still be argued that mainstream news organisations should set the standards for public discourse, and should gather and report the news in an