The twittersphere sent round plenty of links to last night’s Orwell lecture by the Guardian’s editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, so signalling its importance is hardly needed. But I’m mentioning it to urge you to read the full text.
Besides being an excellent read, the lecture is in two parts. The first is the story of the hacking story, with plenty of justified emphasis laid on how difficult it was for the Guardian to get traction for a story which others didn’t, for a long time, want to touch. The second half is Rusbridger’s first outline of how he thinks the press regulation system should be rewritten after the Leveson inquiry. I have a few reservations about some of what he proposes but putting the “public interest” issue front and centre is dead right. I’ll come back to those arguments at a later date, but for now read the whole lecture.
