Well, you knew the media was going to eventually going to go negative with this, as they do with everything eventually. Someday, even digging on private land will be banned.
the declaring part is so that you can be taxed * once they see if they want it its thiers and they "buy it" and since they know about it your taxed on it however if they say no we will not buy it --its still known that you got it -- so if you sell it , its "income" and thus taxible --- if you sell it and do not report it and the govt gets wind of it ,you'll get very heavily "fined" for tax evision (and maybe a bit of jail time as well) -- so like many folks that want to hide income and not pay taxes on it , he doesn't declare his " finds"now -- it seems in the past he did rather than risk losing the valuible item for not doing it and then he saw how things worked out -- he figgered out once he sold it he would be "heavily" taxed on it. , thus "losing" a good bit of his income ---so now hes not reporting them so his "side" income is 100% untaxed -- and he sells on the black market for cash on the sly.
England's laws regarding metal detecting are probably the most lenient and most metal detector friendly I've ever heard of. A lot of people have made money *legally* by following the law. A lot of history has been discovered because of metal detectorists doing things legally.
Seems to me that getting permission of the landowner is no more or less than is promoted on this website.
Thing is, it's not the "media" going negative, these guys they're reporting on are breaking the law. They're the ones doing it.