Could the hacking scandal be used by foreign leaders?

I’m in South Africa filming a Channel 4 documentary (about which more at a later date) and have stumbled across an intriguing by-product of the phone-hacking scandal that the British government may not have thought about.

David Cameron could find himself being cited by authoritarian regimes and wayward presidents around the world as they clamp down on free speech.

There is a long running campaign in South Africa right now resisting attempts in the forthcoming Protection of Information Bill to make it illegal to handle “stolen” documents of the kind that are constantly leaked to newspapers to allege and prove corruption by officials and politicians. The campaigners fear that it could see journalists jailed for exposing wrong doing. The Right to Know campaign is also fighting off attempts to introduce a Media Appeals Tribunal which could be used to punish journalists and news organisations who make mistakes.

Several journalists here have been telling me how disastrous the phone hacking scandal in Britain has been for them. They fear David Cameron’s refusal to rule out statutory regulation of newspapers could open the door for President Zuma to bring it in here.

He would have the perfect riposte to anyone accusing him of encroaching on free speech : if the mother of parliaments in Great Britain is considering it shouldn’t we too? I can see such arguments being put to journalists every time we go to more authoritarian regimes and ask them about freedom of the press.

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