[vidarh]

I agree the comparison is taking it too far. But the US model is fascinating. E.g. consider newspapers wishing to be able to report from the White House. Want your journalist to be able to get a good seat? Want them to have a shot at asking questions? Then behave.

Want to get access to high ranking officials? Same thing.

Instead of throwing anyone in jail it's a matter of strangling them of access so competitors gets important information first or gets to be the ones askin their questions.

Occasionally it doesn't work. Like when a newspaper gets hold of something important enough to be willing to risk their access (such as the Snowden documents). But for tilting the day to day reporting of politics these methods have been honed to a level where they are remarkably effective.

[smcl]

The funny thing is that this situation has bred an altogether different sort of organisation - think Wikileaks and The Intercept. In these cases they don't have to play nice, since people will volunteer even juicier news/disclosures than would otherwise be available through playing nice with the press office.

[prewett]

If you were the president, would you be inclined to answer questions from a journalist that was consistently antagonistic?

An American reporter can freely be critical of the government. They can even publish Snowden documents, which put the government in a very bad light. Nobody even considers harassing them, let alone jailing them. (In fact, legally, they can't.) This fact is huge; it is an essential difference.