The media has copped a bucketing over the last few months, particularly the extensive section of the press controlled by News International.
In England the revelations that led to the closing of The News of the World, and the evidence given to the Leveson inquiry, have shown that self-regulation of the tabloids was a lame duck and is now a lost cause. In Australia the Bolt judgment and the clinical dissection of what is good and what is bad in The Australian by Robert Manne, together with the responses made to these events and the Ricketson inquiry, were less sensational. Although the emperor may have been without clothes, at least he was not running rampantly naked as in England.
But the discussion has called into question the claims of the media to be guardians of free speech and of transparent public life. The educated response to those pretensions now is, Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
The greatest threat to the right to free speech now comes from the lameness of the appeal to it made by representatives of the press when defending the indefensible. At its worst, it was encapsulated in the aphorism conjured by former News of the World journalist, Paul McMullen, 'Privacy is for paedos'. That nihilistic view would be shared by few.
But it points to the lack of grasp why speech should be free, and what kind of speech deserves that freedom. Arguments for freedom must be built around values.
Alexander Minkin, a distinguished Russian journalist recently visiting Australia, showed a way forward. He did so less by what he said than by what he represented.
Minkin came to journalism in Brezhnev's time, and like other independent journalists had to smuggle material abroad, to make critical points by indirection, and faced the constant threat of exile. After glasnost the press was free, but any investigation into political corruption or of the business oligarchy became increasingly dangerous. Over 200 journalists have been killed in Russia in recent years, including Minkin's colleague, Maria Politkovskaya.
The cost of freedom of speech can be seen in Minkin's description of an attempt to kill him. He giggles as he recalls how he was saved by the tiny