The loss of press freedoms far away is easy to lament. Burma’s generals, for instance, seem to have greeted the arrival of the International Press Institute’s annual congress in Rangoon this weekend by locking up editors again. But, for once, try wormwood and gall closer to home.

“Please recognise how disturbing a development it is … that journalists who only ever report the news accurately, honestly and fairly now find themselves prosecuted in our criminal courts,” said Trevor Burke QC, winding up for the four Sun journalists facing prison just a few days ago. And that jury agreed. The four, like more reporters and editors in this stretching saga, were acquitted. Another bloody nose for the CPS and the Met.

But see how much blood lies all around. There’s Ripa of course, the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act, which only now, many hundreds of surreptitious invasions later, will require a judge to agree before the police can demand call information – including the de facto right to track journalists’ sources. There’s that rigid post-Leveson ruling that stops police officers talking to journalists at all, except in the most sanitised circumstances. Civil servants or army officers who talk to the press – or maybe just share a drink with them – stand in parallel peril of dismissal. No secrets involved, nothing classified: just common-or-garden conversation.

There’s a balance. Don’t just think where the press went wrong; think where police and politicians go wildly wrong, too

Why are Whitehall, Westminster and the Yard allowed to pull the curtains closed so far? Why isn’t the problem of freedom just as vexatious in London as Rangoon? Well, it’s Murdoch cash for stories, isn’t it? It’s celebrity tat in the wake of phone hacking. It’s not the serious stuff of polite society or journalists’ self-esteem. And so, in excruciating British fashion, we lurch back into the everlasting debate about all the news that isn’t fit to print. Back to royal charters and Ipso, the only functioning regulator in town.

Sir Alan Moses, Ipso’s first chairman, has been busy this month, minding the ideological gap between Tom Watson and Paul Dacre (with their “ceaseless ability to exchange insults”). He reports good progress on securing the vital underpinning of regulation – “which requires some common understanding between the regulator and the regulated”, with “acquiescence and acceptance instilled”. Moses reckons he must bring the press together to work effectively, and with 4,000 complaints handled in the first few months of Ipso operation, he thinks he’s making progress.

But, of course, some people don’t agree. Take Professor Julia Black, a “pro-director” of the LSE, who wants regulation imposed top-down to address the “intolerable behaviour of the press which so many people abhor”. Critically, she insists, “regulators need to gain the trust not only of those they regulate but also of those on whose behalf they are meant to be regulating, ie the public, or certain parts of it”. Or take Lord Best, presenting his Lords’ communications committee verdict last week on the current state of regulatory play. “The key question remains: when will the government evaluate the success – or otherwise – of the arrangements that have emerged since the royal charter, and what else must happen for it to take further action?”

Now look around in the real, wider world – beyond academe and red benches – and shout frustration. In the real world, the dreadful politicians of Rotherham stand in the dock of public shame (thanks to Andrew Norfolk of the Times). In the real world, the ties that bind Cyril Smith to dismaying police and political forgetfulness grow tighter and more loathsome week by week (thanks in substantial part to the journalists of Exaro). In the real world, we know how hundreds of MPs treated expense claims (thanks to the Telegraph) and how party fundraisers wheel, deal and oil forbidden contacts (thanks to Dispatches and the Telegraph again). We see how membership of their Lordships’ house hangs on the size of a cheque. We watch disgusted (with the Mail on Sunday) while would-be MPs play rancid, racist games. Here comes another election …

Of course, as Moses would surely observe, there’s no point in an insult-ridden rant. Of course calmer bridge-building helps in the end. Nevertheless, the thought that free journalism is best safeguarded by “governments taking action” at their Lordships’ behest is hard to swallow; and Julia Black’s concern over “intolerable” deeds that afflict “the public, or certain parts of it” becomes pretty intolerable in turn.

We know what the public, sitting in jury boxes, makes of this creeping suppression. Joe Juror raises two fingers. Joe doesn’t think the press is pure of heart, whether he reads upmarket or down, a grubby least-worst more than a best; but he believes it’s there – time and again – to puncture the plots and illusions of an increasingly unresponsive, shielded authority. In particular, he shrugs away great-and-good lectures on ethical conduct from “certain parts” of higher society who don’t read or like newspapers much anyway.

Moses is toiling intelligently to find common ground. Let’s hope he succeeds. But note how the creeping mantra of privacy prevents inquiry – except by the state. See how journalists can be threatened on the flimsiest of “misconduct in public office” grounds. Watch for whatever government we get next to start pondering “action”.

There’s a balance. Don’t just think where the press went wrong; think where the police and politicians go wildly wrong, too. Think of computers smashed in newspaper basements. Think of reporters arrested for writing about duff army kit in Iraq. Think of Big Cyril. Think, if you sit in a courtroom, that the public, 12-strong, defines its own interest best – whether the trial itself, with its “accredited correspondents”, is secret or not. This isn’t Burma, you may smugly say. But pray: what exactly is it?