The enemies of press freedom should stop handing out prizes in the name of George Orwell (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/tobyyoung/100197296/the-enemies-of-press-freedom-should-stop-handing-out-prizes-in-the-name-of-george-orwell/) by Toby Young, blogs.telegraph.co.uk | January 9, 2013

‘… The problem is, the Orwell Prize is administered by the Media Standards Trust, the same body that launched the Hacked Off Campaign. It seems pretty clear to me that the present aims of Hacked Off – namely, to see all of Leveson’s recommendations implemented in full, including the statutory underpinning of a new, independent press regulator – would not have found sympathy with Orwell…’

This article quotes from Orwell to give you an idea of his attitudes, and refers to this essay:

The Freedom of the Press (http://theorwellprize.co.uk/george-orwell/by-orwell/essays-and-other-works/the-freedom-of-the-press/) by George Orwell

‘…At any given moment there is an orthodoxy, a body of ideas which it is assumed that all right-thinking people will accept without question. It is not exactly forbidden to say this, that or the other, but it is ‘not done’ to say it, just as in mid-Victorian times it was ‘not done’ to mention trousers in the presence of a lady. Anyone who challenges the prevailing orthodoxy finds himself silenced with surprising effectiveness. A genuinely unfashionable opinion is almost never given a fair hearing, either in the popular press or in the highbrow periodicals.

At this moment what is demanded by the prevailing orthodoxy is an uncritical admiration of Soviet Russia…’