The 'media pen' is bad for democracy

Democracy is not a material thing, made up of 'structures' or 'rules', it is something more than that. Democracy is a promise about relationships – the relationships between those who choose their leaders and those who lead them, between the people who have power in society and those who make the rules they must live by.

And it is a promise about the relationship between those with power and those who are there to scrutinise those with power. It does not matter if the rules are nominally in place; the success or failure of democracy will always rest on whether the promise made by democracy (of the people, by the people, for the people) is reflected in these real relationships.

That is why the Presiding Officer is dead wrong that the Scottish Parliament's 'media pen' is benign. It is absolutely anything but; it is yet another small betrayal of the principle of democracy, and all of these betrayals mount up.

For those unaware of why this is an issue, it is generally accepted that journalists in Western democracies have conditional freedom of movement in the parliament they are reporting on. They do not have anything like unrestricted freedom – they cannot 'doorstop' politicians in their office or wander the corridors housing elected politicians eavesdropping for gossip.

But they clearly must have unrestricted access to the chamber (though not all areas of the chamber), and they must have a methodology of interrogating politicians making decisions on our behalf and spending money that requires us to be taxed. Crucially, it cannot be the politician who decides whether they are scrutinised or not.

The Scottish Parliament has just chosen to significantly restrict the conditions that govern access to the parliament. Rather than being able to approach and challenge politicians who are there to represent citizens, who are paid well to do so and who have power over them, Scotland's journalists are now penned in, permitting politicians to approach them when the politician wants, but to evade scrutiny whenever the politician doesn't.

The new system is devised by politicians, and they have clearly reassured themselves that their shift from something that looks like 'mandatory scrutiny' to something much more like 'optional scrutiny' is entirely appropriate because they are morally upstanding and so will voluntarily act in ways that enable scrutiny of democracy.

They have told themselves that the procedural equivalent of tying troublemakers to the radiator is appropriate because every so often they will pop over to the radiator and 'do the right thing' and necessary because the journalists have 'crossed a line'. This is hardly rare; Donald Trump also believes that suing journalists to intimidate them into silence is appropriate and necessary.

Viktor Orbán, Benjamin Netanyahu and Recep Tayyip Erdoğan also believe that their own mounting restrictions on media freedom were appropriate and necessary and resulted from journalists 'crossing a line that exists mainly in the mind of the politicians concerned.

It is almost never – never – a good sign when journalism is restricted. Regulating ownership, or moral standards, or creating privacy laws to protect the public are all perfectly reasonable responses because all of these are about keeping the promise of democracy. Each of these are steps to protect the civil liberties of citizens or ensure democracy is supported by a diverse media base.

But restricting access to politicians absolutely is not. It is a charter for arrogance, corruption and impunity. And it simply should not be in the power of politicians to make unilateral decisions to cancel or restrict freedom of journalism where it relates to scrutinising them themselves. It is a clear conflict of interest.

And in the end, the political parties imposing these restrictions have themselves all crossed all sorts of lines – Labour and allegations of Chinese spy rings close to government, the SNP and sexual abuse and embezzlement cases, Reform on unsavoury donations and unacceptable political rhetoric, the Tories still emerging from the many scandals of the Covid era.

All have crossed lines, and what action have they taken to rebalance a system to force them back onto the right side of the line? None. No action has been taken over the SNP refusing to act on internal complaints of sexual abuse, or its lax governance standards, or over Labour's shady corporate lobbying relationships, or over personal gifts to Nigel Farage.

Instead, they have tried to neuter the people who should be holding them to account for these scandals. This is why Common Weal wants a Citizens' Assembly to regulate the operating rules of parliament and not the politicians.

Because if there is something worth noting in the interview with the Presiding Officer on this subject, it isn't his refusal to consider whether this step is ill-judged; he attempted to refuse to answer questions on the subject itself. Self-regulation doesn't work; self-regulation by legislators is a risk to democracy. It certainly does not live up to the promise of democracy.