'' A Complete Right to Speak''

"A free media is a vital part of a free society," says Tony Blair. "You only need to look at where such a free media is absent to know this truth."

.

In case anyone thought the media had a monopoly on comment, however, Blair quickly followed up by saying: "But it is also part of freedom to be able to comment on the media. It has a complete right to be free. I, like anyone else, have a complete right to speak."

.

Indeed our PM was exercising that right, giving a lecture (linked in full) on the nature of public life and the changing relationship between politics and the media in the 21st Century, to an audience of journalists at the Reuters building in London. "This was not a whinge," said Blair. "This speech is not a complaint. It is an argument."

.

The relationship between politics, public life and the media was changing as a result of the changing context of communication in which we all operate. No-one was at fault - it was a fact. But it was the prime minister's view that the effect of this change "is seriously adverse to the way public life is conducted".

.

Thus, he said, "we need, at the least, a proper and considered debate about how we manage the future, in which it is in all our interests that the public is properly and accurately informed. They are the priority and they are not well served by the current state of affairs."Doubtless by then, the hacks were dipping their pens in vitriol, ready for the off and Blair saved his prediction to the very last, saying of his speech, "I know it will be rubbished in certain quarters." adding, with a touch of defiance, "But I also know this has needed to be said.''

.

Now given the author and the way he had manipulated that media, cries of hypocrisy and worse were not long in coming, well what a suprise!