There is no particularly strong legal basis for "freedom of press" in the UK. While recent history has had the press being largely unhindered by the government, our history is one of strict restrictions that have been gradually relaxed over the centuries.

You're probably confusing us with the US, which has some constitutional guarantees.

Thanks for clearing that up. US press seems curiously absent from even covering this story. As per @mathewi the only US media companies on the #panamapapers team are Miami Herald, Univision, Fusion and McLatchy.

I guess we'll see how active they'll become and what their spin will be, if any, in the coming days.

Apparently they split out all the documents relating to Americans and haven't released them yet. So nothing has "hit home" so to speak for American media.

The US press situation is a standard consolidation story. They are dependent on leaks and access to officials, and have little meaningful competition to drive risky behavior.

There's a reason Fox leans republican and CNN leans democrat -- they get to avoid competition.

In a market like NYC with 4-5 papers, the Post and Daily News always try to one up each other, posting off politicians in the process.

> I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press.

Freedom of press does not guarantee freedom from persecution (or prosecution), so the international consortium approach is a much better guarantee for all the information actually getting out.

That's exactly what freedom of the press is supposed to mean...

The BBC does have freedom from persecution or prosecution (assuming it doesn't publish things that are e.g libelous). But, due to the particular way it is funded, it doesn't have freedom from government intervention.

In particular the BBC charter is reviewed every so often. This process involves the government and can affect things like the level of funding available to the BBC, and its remit in terms of the services it is allowed to offer. It's no secret that the current government are not big fans of the BBC, both for ideological reasons, and because of cozy relationships with certain commercial broadcasters. They are already waging a war in the press trying to convince the public that the BBC has an intrinsic left-wing bias, and are mooting ideas like preventing it from making programmes that are too popular and so may draw audiences away from commercial rivals. In this environment, and with funding already being cut, and jobs lost, it's not hard to see why you would think twice about running stories that could lead you open to allegations of an anti-government agenda.

Although the particular details of that situation are unique to the BBC, it's important to note that commercial broadcasters, and media outlets in general, also don't have freedom in the sense of freedom-from-consequences. For example there was a story last year about HSBC pulling adverts from media outlets which ran articles critical of its business practices. In an environment where, particularly for print media, margins are tight or non-existent, it's easy to see how this can give commercial interests hidden editorial control over a "free" press.

Not really, freedom of press is much narrower. What you're suggesting is an ideal world where journalists are protected from the egos and reputations of powerful people who might want to retaliate against them for their reporting. There are many forms of legal retaliation that freedom of press cannot protect against. In practice, this freedom is weighed against the consequences of publishing any single piece.

If not freedom from prosecution, then what else would "freedom of the press" guarantee?

For example, not having to run all (or huge parts of) your stories through a censor before being allowed to publish them (e.g. China, Israel).

Or, like in Germany, various protections like e.g. the police not allowed without complex judiciary checks to monitor the phones and internet connections of a journalist, or to go into a newspaper office and seizing random data to uncover a source.

You can be prosecuted for reasons entirely unrelated to your publishing of a story, even if that is the true reason. Do you think people don't try to intimidate journalists?

> but I thought here in the west we're assured that we have freedom of press

Hell no. As long as crap like NSLs (or other secret gag orders, see UK), anti-whistleblower laws or (esp. USA) actually independent media with mass reach exist, there is no freedom of the press.