So the original cornerstone is in your opinion publishing a newspaper, so could I publish the Paedophile Clarion? Including all the kids that need a good seeing to? How about The Bad Yid News with those Jews that need corrected? Maybe the Nigger Mirror, when you need to know who should be enslaved?
The freedom of the press is a hugely complex topic and not one that I think boils down to the idea that we haven't banned things as a cornerstone of whatever it is we do. The history of the press is a history of being banned not of being free.
I doubt it, Nearly. I would not condone any of the above as I have made perfectly clear in post 26, by saying:
"I regard the freedom of the press, however much we disagree with it, as a cornerstone of democracy, and it would have to be something very extreme indeed, which would convince me that banning was an appropriate action."
All you have done is give a series of very extreme examples. Incidentally, I wonder if Swift's 'A Modest Proposal' would sit happily in their midst.
It is my opinion that the freedom of the press is simply an extension of free speech, and, if there are extreme examples, such as the ones you enumerate, then each individual one needs to be looked at, and a judgement as to whether action is taken, and this may well include banning, according to the law of the land.
Of course the freedom of the press is a hugely complex topic. That is why I did not take seriously the suggestion that we simply ban the Daily Mail. I have not said that we haven't banned things whilst still regarding free speech(and its extension, the right to print) as a cornerstone of our democracy. It seems to me the history of the press includes both the right to free speech and the right to be curtailed. That, for me, is part of the complexity that you refer to.