A few weeks ago, I listened to one of Vladimir Putin’s advisers complaining that many of his country’s journalists “were far from being of very high quality”. He added, in an aside meant to flatter his western listeners, that “your journalists are probably more honest than ours”. His comments struck me as a clear attack on the very idea of a free press. But to my astonishment, a couple of the billionaire American businessmen in attendance murmured sympathetically that, in fact, many western journalists were little better than the low- quality Russian variety.

I shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, Barbara Amiel, recently caught in an elevator with a couple of reporters in the Chicago courthouse where her husband Conrad Black is on trial, snarlingly described them as “vermin”.