Labor's truculent Health Minister Aneurin Bevan had called British news papers "the most prostituted press in the world." The National Union of Journalists (which the weekly Economist labeled "the fifth column of the fourth estate") had been even more specific. It charged Britain's Tory press lords with operating monopolies, kowtowing to advertisers, distorting and withholding the news, and blacklisting (i.e., refusing to mention) political and personal enemies. To investigate charges of this kind, and perhaps to lay the groundwork for regulation of the press, the House of Commons voted to set up...
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