freedom of the press isn't a popular idea.

[Thorne]

Freedom of the press is vitally important to a free society, but that doesn't mean it should be completely uncontrolled and answerable to no-one. So I think the press should be allowed to do and say exactly what it thinks it must say, but it should have to answer to a responsible supervisory body for any complaints against it, and if it is found to have abused its privileges, to pay a very heavy penalty, including, in the worst cases, closure of the newwspaper/radio station/tv station concerned. Compensation payments would also seem appropriate in many cases too.

I agree with you 100% about the importance of a free press, and about the responsibility of the press to insure that it is reporting accurately and factually. The problem I have is with the idea of a supervisory body which would have the power to close down the media. This would be an awesome amount of power in any country, as this kind of body could become a puppet of the government. How do you insure that doesn't happen? Perhaps the most reliable way to control these things is through the power of money: if advertisers refuse to deal with those who distort or outright lie, they will soon be out of business. Of course, then you run the risk of big business controlling the media, which might be worse than any government.

As for the tripe that you find in the gutter press, I think they can be safely ignored: they don't matter, and the people they write about don't matter, either. They feed off each other in order to make each other rich at the expense of readers and fans eager for the latest gossip and scandal. It's a source of wonder to me that there is so much money involved in what they do.

There's so much money involved because there are so many people who thrive on this trash. And the worst thing you could do would be to ignore them. They DO matter, precisely because so many people devour every word they print (though there are all too many who don't actually print any real words.) I would venture to guess that the large majority of those people who do follow the "gutter press" don't spend much time with the real media, but they are still voters! This makes that portion of the press far more influential than they have any right to be.