News Of The World final edition. Photograph by Howard Lake
After a year long inquiry, Lord Justice Leveson has today published his 2000 page report into the regulation of the press.
In a decision that will likely come in from much condemnation from Fleet Street, Leveson has recommended that a new independent media regulator should be set up after the failures on the self-regulating Press Complains Commission (PCC), with this new regulator backed up by law.
This would be the first law in the UK governing the press since the seventeenth century.
It would be optional for newspapers and magazines to join this new regulator, but the report leaves the possibility open that any organisation that does not join this new regulator would instead be regulated by OFCOM as a “backstop regulator”.
The inquiry was set up after the disgust of the public over the hacking of mobile phones by some tabloids such as the now defunct News of the World. The newspaper industry has pressed Leveson to avoid legislation, but Leveson described their recommendations were were not good enough with the industry wanting to “mark their own homework”.
In describing his report, Leveson said:
“The press needs to establish a new regulatory body which is truly independent of industry leaders, and of government, and of politicians. It must promote high standards of journalism and protect both the public interest and the rights and liberties of individuals”
Conservative Prime Minister David Cameron and Deputy Prime Minster Nick Clegg remain devided on how to proceed with the findings on the report.
You can find the full report here: AN INQUIRY INTO THE CULTURE, PRACTICES AND ETHICS OF THE PRESS [PDF]
