HOWZAT

“Nor in his mind was there anything wrong in a man of such wealth using his money to exploit women in this way. Would he feel the same way, I wonder, if one of those women had been his wife or daughter?”

He added: “But what is most worrying about Justice Eady’s decisions is that he is ruling that - when it comes to morality - the law in Britain is now effectively neutral, which is why I accuse him, in his judgments, of being ’amoral’.”

Mr Dacre said that, when it came to suppressing media freedom, Mr Justice Eady was seemingly ubiquitous, adding “surely the greatest scandal is that while London boasts scores of eminent judges, one man is given a virtual monopoly of all cases against the media enabling him to bring in a privacy law by the back door”.

English Common Law was the collective wisdom of many different judges over the ages, he said.

“The freedom of the press, I would argue, is far too important to be left to the somewhat desiccated values of a single judge who clearly has an animus against the popular press and the right of people to freedom of expression.

“I personally would rather have never heard of Max Mosley and the squalid purgatory he inhabits. It is the others I care about: the crooks, the liars, the cheats, the rich and the corrupt sheltering behind a law of privacy being created by an unaccountable judge.”

Mr Dacre said this had huge implications for newspapers and for society.

“Since time immemorial public shaming has been a vital element in defending the parameters of what are considered acceptable standards of social behaviour, helping ensure that citizens - rich and poor - adhere to them for the good of the greater community.

“For hundreds of years, the press has played a vital role in that process. It has the freedom to identify those who have offended public standards of decency - the very standards its readers believe in - and hold the transgressors up to public condemnation. If their readers don’t agree with the defence of such values, they would not buy those papers in such huge numbers.

“Put another way, if mass-circulation newspapers, which, of course, also devote considerable space to reporting and analysis of public affairs, don’t have the freedom to write about scandal, I doubt whether they will retain their mass circulations with the obvious worrying implications for the democratic process.

“Now some revile a moralising media. Others, such as myself, believe it is the duty of the media to take an ethical stand. Either way, it is a choice but Justice Eady - with his awesome powers - has taken away our freedom of expression to make that choice.”

Mr Dacre, who was delivering the society’s annual lecture last night, also turned his fire upon the BBC, saying: “make no mistake, we are witnessing the seemingly inexorable growth of what is effectively a dominant state-sponsored news service.”

He added: “The corporation has all but seen off ITV’s news services, both nationally and locally, has crippled commercial radio, is distorting the free market for internet newspapers and now, with its preposterous proposal for 65 ultra-local websites, is going for the jugular of the local newspaper industry. Lines must be drawn in the sand.”

Mr Dacre said the press had to learn how to make money from websites, warning: “If we can’t, this headlong plunge into the web will turn out to have been suicidal lunacy.”

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