PRESS WATCH : Fatal Cure

In his great study of 19th-Century U.S. society--”Democracy in America”--Alexis de Tocqueville averred that the press here was a rather rowdy operation and that journalists in general were a decidedly motley crew. Even so, he said, proposals for controlling the scandal-loving American press would inevitably constitute a cure far worse than the disease.

That admonition might now well apply to efforts to crack down on Britain’s press. London is proposing to establish an official regulatory body, under which newspapers could be fined and ordered to print corrections in language and with a prominence dictated by the government.

It’s true that many people find the British press often crass, obnoxious and intrusive--and that’s on a good day. Fleet Street has been particularly rowdy over the last year, of course. Newspapers have printed controversial revelations not only about the royal family but prominent government officials.

But the proposed Independent Press Authority, dominated by non-journalists appointed, directly or indirectly, by the home secretary, would have little independence: It would be funded by the government. That alone should alarm the British. You don’t have to love every excess of British newspapers to want them to escape this sort of regulation.

The internationally respected newspaper The Independent termed the proposal “a clumsy and dangerous stick in an effort to crack a small, wizened nut.” The government should abandon the effort before it embarrasses itself further.