904-NMS-1220-15-F4.DOC response. It is no answer at all to then say that no question of muzzling free speech arises, or to simply allege that there might indeed yet be an answer, and it matters not that that answer, or what passes for it, was not provided when an opportunity presented itself, and the fact of that answer being sought is so wholly concealed. More and more, in the name of security or reputation, we are increasingly too eager to surrender this, and its sister, freedoms. When we do so we forget: we forget that these freedoms are vital to our survival and our existence as a nation, as a people. We forget that these freedoms have not come easily. They have not come cheap. They were hard won after years of sacrifice and toil and struggle. They have not been given. They have been forged. We surrender them at our peril. To suggest, as the Plaintiffs do, that because they are a much-vaunted public body, they are, only for that reason, immune from all error and wrongdoing is, I think, a grotesque over-simplification. It is fashionable these days to deride every section of the media as mere papparazzi, chasing the salacious and steamy. We forget again. None of the scams and the leaks of the past two decades would have been possible without journalists, editors, newspapers and television news anchors. We have grown accustomed to mocking them. We deride their manner, describing them as loud, brash, obnoxious, abrasive and opinionated. We forget. We forget that but for them the many uncomfortable questions that must be asked of those in authority and those with the sheer muscle power of money would forever go unasked and unanswered. We forget that it is these persons we are so wont to mock who are, truly, the watchdogs of our body politic, the voice of our collective conscience, the sentinels on our ramparts. They may annoy. They may irritate. They certainly 26 of 30 ::: Uploaded on - 10/09/2015 ::: Downloaded on - 03/02/2020 18:08:37 :::