My friend Dr Sam Fowles’s proposal for a “truth law” is well-intentioned but flawed and Orwellian (The big idea: should we have a ‘truth law’?, 18 July). The examples he uses to make the argument simply do not stand up to any scrutiny.
The causes of the 2008 financial crisis are interpretive without black and white distinctions between “truth” and “falsity”. It is also implausible that were such a truth law to exist, the public would, as he implies, suddenly become “right about everything”.
Ordinary citizens do not have access to the skills and information to accurately estimate the scale of benefit fraud or immigration in the UK. Even if we were lucky enough to have serially honest politicians, this would still be the case. Disinformation is a serious problem. That’s why it requires workable solutions. These should address why false narratives gain wide appeal. Whether we put the vulnerability to lies of Brexit and Donald Trump voters down to racism, or the legacy of deindustrialisation, the remedies to this state of affairs primarily lie in politics, not criminal law.
Above all, attacking the principle of freedom of speech is dangerous. The proposed law would provide a mandate to the courts to interfere in our politics to adjudicate on matters of truth and falsity. This is highly likely to politicise the courts. You only need to look across the Atlantic to see the dangers inherent in such a move and how it wouldn’t benefit democracy.
Dr Luke Cooper
Senior research fellow, London School of Economics
• Sam Fowles makes cogent arguments for a law compelling politicians to be truthful. But what about the media? Broadcasters must meet standards of accuracy, administered by Ofcom. But there is no such requirement for national newspapers, most of which are members of the Independent Press Standards Organisation, a weak and biased complaints-handler controlled by the newspaper industry itself.
The result is that, while members of the government lie to 649 people at a time, the national newspapers which support them are able to pump out falsities to millions of people every day with impunity.
We don’t need a “truth law” for the press, but we do need independent and effective regulation, as recommended in the Leveson report. Imagine if all newspapers held the government to account instead of repeating its lies. The last decade might have been very different.
Nathan Sparkes
Chief executive, Hacked Off
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