- Press campaign to try to paint charter as intruding into press freedom
- an all-party agreement built around a Royal Charter which could, for the first time, provide a mechanism for effective, independent and enduring self-regulation of the press
- Parliament standing up to the corporate might of some very powerful media enterprises
- press focused on celebs to cover up other transgressions
- three crucial ingredients: a Board which is independent of influence either from the industry or from politicians; a speedy complaints process for complainants; and a Code of Conduct which will spell out the boundaries of what is acceptable—just as the Press Complaints Commission code does now—but which, crucially, will include ordinary working journalists rather than being controlled entirely by editors, define public interest exceptions to breaches of the Code rather than leaving them – as now—vague and inchoate
David Cameron:
warned the press that it runs the risk of facing "hideous statutory regulation" in the future if the Independent Press Standards Organisation declines to seek recognition under the terms of the new royal charter.
Should join now before a less liberal government forces new regulations on the press
Not a press law
Ryan J Thomas:
- Since emerging from the shadow of the Star Chamber, however, the British press has long been operationally free.
- In the 20th century, a series of crises of media ethics and the emergence of the strictly regulated broadcasting industry prompted the formation of the General Council in 1953 as an industry regulator. The General Council began under a non-binding framework, tasked with shepherding the press to a more ethical performance after a lapse in public trust in the media. Funded by newspaper proprietors and staffed by newspaper editors, the General Council was created as an alternative to the specter of statutory regulation, establishing a trend that would last for over fifty years.
- 2004, when journalists from the Daily Express approached the PCC with claims that they were being pressured to write racist articles
- early 2011, the Express Group of newspapers and magazines opted-out altogether of the PCC, meaning that members of the public have no recourse if they are aggrieved by the content of an Express Group publication
Gordon Rayner:
Sir David Calcutt QC:
In 1993 complained that the PCC was “in essence, a body set up by the industry, financed by the industry, dominated by the industry, and operating a code of practice devised by the industry and which is over-favourable to the industry.”
John Mann: (Labour MP):
- Maria Miller should be stripped of her responsibility for determining the future of press regulation, the MP who triggered the investigation into her expenses has said
- The Culture Secretary has repeatedly said that newspapers should not be allowed to police themselves when it comes to implementing Lord Justice Leveson’s recommendations for a new regulatory body.
- “It is ironic that you have MPs self-regulating and self-policing themselves while Maria Miller, the MP they were taking this decision about, is the very minister responsible for taking decisions on self-regulation of the press.
Roy Greenslade: http://www.theguardian.com/media/greenslade+press-regulation
- Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, and another man similarly plucked from obscurity, Sir Hayden Phillips
- Phillips one is a former supreme court judge, its founding president no less. Phillips two is a former senior civil servant
- according to the report presented by Lord Justice Leveson back in November 2012, the appointment panel "should contain a substantial majority of members who are demonstrably independent of the press"
- the panel seeking a candidate for the £150,000-a-year post are hoping to avoid appointing a peer or anyone connected with politics
- Some publishers and editors who have yet to sign Ipso contracts are said to be waiting to see who it is before deciding whether to jump aboard - The Guardian, The Independent (which includes the London Evening Standard) and the Financial Times
- Ipso is no different in structure than the PCC and it's purse-strings will be in the hands of the Regulatory Funding Company, and its powers are weighted towards those groups that pay the largest fees
- It will be a publishers' club in which the better-off members will dictate how that club is to be run
- Worse, it is a club that will be impossible to leave because it binds those who sign its contracts to a five-year deal
- Criticizes the PCC's criticism of The Guardian for daring to publish stories about phone-hacking at the News of the World (while letting the hacking paper off the hook) and apparently Under Ipso, The Guardian would have to accept it
- One key Ipso extra's future is in doubt, the piloting of a potentially useful arbitral arm, as is not endorsed by several publishers
- Unlikely to use its huge fines
- not genuine reforms of the previously discredited system
- the alternative is joining Impress which will seek recognition under the royal charter which is influenced by Hacked Off
- The charter could, however, be amended by politicians
- The three abstaining bodies could set up their own regulator which would temporary and would have to pay the costs of staffing, but he doesn't think the Financial Times would do that
- The financial Times would probably not want any part of Ipso nor a regulator recognised under the royal charter especially as they see themselves as an international newspaper as it sells more print copies in the United States than in Britain and is read more widely outside the UK
- He likes the idea of handling complaints in-house, through a Guardian-style Readers' Editor or an internal ombudsman which Private Eye has always done
- Leveson did not recommend the royal charter (he preferred Ofcom)
- Ipso is only about the freedom of publishers, not the public
- A charter-recognised regulator offers freedom circumscribed by the state and that, by definition, is not press freedom
- Thinks its 'absurd' that Lord Phillips is choosing people involved in IPSO
- lay members from high positions and journalists on IPSO's new board - ratio is 4:2
- Thinks Hacked Off's criticisms miss the point - hysterical
- the means of monitoring its performance still needs tightening
- If people like the two Phillipses can't be trusted to appoint new superintendents of press regulation, it is hard, frankly, to see who can
- One of the 'lay members' in Lord Brown who was involved in surveillance - what about revelations about government spying?
Hacked Off
- the appointment panel fails to meet Leveson's criteria which stated that it must contain a "substantial majority of members who are demonstrably independent of the press."
- shows the newspaper companies' utter contempt for the very idea of independence
- not transparent
- IPSO includes a serving editor [Witherow] employed by Rupert Murdoch who has displayed an extraordinary bias against the public in his papers' coverage of press affairs
- exactly the kind of shifty operating that made the PCC such a disgrace
- whoever is nominally in charge of Ipso will be the puppets of the big news publishers, just as the PCC was
- Mr Murdoch, the Mail and the Telegraph have ensured that they will hold the purse strings and call the shots.
- the PCC was run for the benefit of the press, rather than the public. The same is true of the Ipso project
- he newspaper industry needs to do to win the public's trust is to establish a self-regulator that meets the basic standards recommended by Leveson and embodied in the royal charter
- Royal charter not allowed to be meddled with by politicians so press will remain independent
Hayden Phillips:
- wide range of candidates of quality and experience will come forward to serve on such an important new national institution
Ian Hislop:
- Private Eye not criticised in the Leveson Trials but will be forced to join new system which will penalize it
- If journalists break the law should be taken to court - all major incidents were breaches of the law - contempt of court, hacking law, the law needs to be observed
- as soon as the door is open it might be hard to shut
- Watchdog appointed by the establishment
- Freedom of press threatened
- Not just 'bogus right wing lunatics' who are protesting
- Private Eye criticises press so didn't join the PCC
- Hacked Off too close to Royal Charter
Johnathan H (of Impress)
- IMPRESS would not necessarily seek recognition under the Charter
- aim to be recognisable but only to seek recognition if the founding members wished to do so
- agree with free speech groups like Article 19 that the Charter does not in itself pose a threat to press freedom, and that any risks in the Crime and Courts Act can be mitigated
- many journalists are uncomfortable with the post-Leveson framework
- if recognition under the Charter was a deal-breaker,then could find another way of ensuring the regulator's independence and effectiveness
- IMPRESS has the added advantage not 'belonging' to the newspapers being regulated
Ed Mliliband: Too long we've had a system were the press have been marking their own homework
Christopher Jeffries: (wrongly accused of Joanna Yates murder)
- Royal Charter will work
- amendment will give it legislative force
- impossible to be watered down unless there is a 2/3s majority in Parliament - Hacked Off, Labour and Lib Dems wanted
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