The Spectator is a longstanding opponent of action on press standards.  If the magazine truly believes that publishers should be unaccountable and able to engage in intrusion and disinformation with impunity, it has every right to make that case.

But when it relies on falsehoods and distortions to prop upits dubious arguments, it is insulting its own readers.  They are entitled to the facts, so that they may draw their own conclusions.

A recent article speculated that Andy Burnham might be supportive of action to protect the public from media wrongdoing.

It included the following falsehoods.

1.     Hacked Off Board Director Hugh Grant is a “campaigner for restrictions on a free press and free speech”.

Mr Grant is a Board Director of Hacked Off.  Neither Hacked Off nor Grant have ever campaigned for “restrictions” on press freedom or free speech.  We explicitly call for press membership of a regulator which has no power to interfere in pre-publication matters.

2.     Hacked Off intend to “push for more state control of free expression”.

This is just nonsense; we campaign for independent regulation so that complaints about media wrongdoing can be adjudicated on fairly.

3.     “[Burnham] also advocated for Section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act, which sought to make publishers liable for all costs in libel and privacy lawsuits unless they were members of a state-run regulator, even if they won their case.”

This is not how section 40 worked and in any case, there was no prospect of “state-run” regulation.

Section 40 would have protected newspapers signed up to an independent self-regulator from meritless litigation (so-called “SLAPPs”).  This would have been a great advantage for freedom of speech.  The Spectator campaigned against it, because it objects to independent regulation.

Instead, the magazine has joined a complaints-handler called IPSO, which is run by a group of newspaper executives and, ironically perhaps, politicians.

4.     Vague arguments linking press standards to “shadow-banning”, “non-crime hate incidents” etc.

These have nothing to do with press standards whatsoever.

In any case, independent press regulation would protect free speech.  So far as it would end complaints-handling by the politician-linked “IPSO” body, it would enhance press freedom.

5.     Referring independent regulation as “government press regulation”.

This is obviously untrue and absurd.

Especially when IPSO, The Spectator’s choice of complaints-handler, was run by an ex-Government Minister until recently (such an appointment would be banned under an independent regulator).

It is disappointing that The Spectator appears to have so little confidence in the strength of its arguments that it feels compelled to rely on falsities and distortions to make its case.

An offer to The Spectator to provide a piece for the magazine which gives an alternative (and fact-based) view on the issue of media standards has been extended.