World press freedom...with hilarious consequences

A return to my soapbox on the topic of press freedom. But hang onto your hats, we're going global.

There's an article in the Economist this week that looks at the World Press Freedom Index, noting that although Western Europe has its issues, they seem to be nothing compared to the new entrants to the EU.

In Slovakia, for example, the parliament passed a law last year that means editors have to guarantee the subject of a story the right to reply, and the reply has to be the same length of original and placed in the same prominence within the publication....even if the original's facts were correct.

This is clearly one of those laws that should end in "....with hilarious consequences!"

Imagine if the Slovaks had the same celebutante obesssion as the Brits. Victoria Beckham would practically own The Sun, Paris Hilton would be hospitalised from the exhaustion of creating more....more....more....more column inches for herself, and we'd never hear the end of the Big Brother contestants.

Having said that, the likelihood of any of these people having the wits and wisdom to fill the column inches to which they become entitled is pretty low.....so I guess it would keep us PRs in a job for a little while longer!