Onora O’Neill made a powerful contribution to the Leveson Inquiry into the Culture, Practices and Ethics of the UK press. Sir Brian Leveson was clearly persuaded by O’Neill’s account of press freedom as a communication right which must meet the needs of the public. The post-Leveson framework for press regulation is designed to meet the public’s need for accurate news reporting. However, this framework has met fierce opposition from the news industry, in which press freedom is understood to mean an absolute freedom from regulatory restraint. Can, and should, we reconcile O’Neill’s ethics of positive liberty with the news industry’s culture of negative liberty?
This lecture was held at the 2017 Holberg Symposium: "Ethics for Communication" in honour of Holberg Laureate Onora O'Neill.
BIOGRAPHY: Jonathan Heawood is the CEO of IMPRESS: The Independent Monitor for the Press. He has previously worked as a journalist and human rights campaigner and has written on free speech and regulation for publications, including The Encyclopedia of Twentieth-Century Fiction, Critical Quarterly, Journal of Media Law, Ethical Space and Communications Law.