Of course, remember that the Guardian was perfectly fine with the government harassing journalists
It's fairly simple:
Journalists who break the law to bribe police and others for information, hack voicemails of private individuals, and intrude on the privacy of individuals should be punished. These things are not in the public interest, there is no excuse for doing them just to make money by publishing the (often prurient) details of someone's life.
Journalists who shed light on what the state is doing (even if that means publishing secret documents), if they can argue that is in the public interest, should not.
Of course there are some grey areas between the two, but the constrast of Murdoch's News organisation bribing policemen and the Guardian publishing stories based on top-secret documents from a whistleblower is an edifying one I think.
Reporters are not immune from the law, despite the rhetoric coming from the Murdoch press. The police investigations into the News Of The World and The Sun are about clearly criminal behaviour: bribing police officers, harassment, phone and email hacking, theft and perjury. There was very little 'public interest' in any of that illegal activity.
Most of the Leverson suggestions were about correcting a power imbalance between normal members of the public and the media/government elite. Making it easier for ordinary people to seek reparations from a newspaper is not 'government harassment'. Requiring papers to print retractions after being proven wrong in a court of law is hardly the same as the prime minister personally ordering the destruction of computers, confiscation of equipment and detention of journalists to prevent reporting about an issue.
While dare say the Guardian isn't perfect (not that it's relevant) I would distrust anything coming from Spiked, a magazine whose modus operandi is to be contrarian on every issue. They are, in effect, professional trolls.
"Spiked" used to be "Living Marxism", which was the magazine of the Revolutionary Communist Party. The RCP members I used to know (only a handful) would revel in their own inconsistency - so since the demise of the RCP I can fully understand Spiked carrying on that particular tradition.
Another way to look at it was The Guardian was perfectly fine with consequences being meted out when people were illegally invading the privacy of others.
The Press Regulation Scheme is in no way similar to the use of MI5 and police resources to interrogate an individual who ,for all in intents and purposes, seems innocent of any terrorism related crime. I see no conflict here with the Guardian's stance on these issues.
