Leveson

lionlilac, We are a free country. The Murdoch press is free to print what it likes, when it likes.

The main problem with Britain has always been a largelly politically ignorant working class, with the media feeding of it.

I cannot accept the idea of state intervention, exactly because we do not have a system in which we can trust to implement it fairly. Think I'm with Mamie and Bluebell and Pogs on the whole.

No need to castigate the millions of readers, only the producers, surely?

vampirequeen , The Sun is the largest selling newspaper in Britain. Doesnt this tell you the mentality of its readers and why the phone hacking scandal arose ?

It all comes down to the people.

Yes we need a free press. But how do we tackle the gutter mentality of the Sun and the Daily Mail's gutter minded readership ?

I've signed the petition. I want to read the truth, not speculation. I want journalists investigating stories without criminal methods eg hacking. I want a true free society where the truth is told and money or power are not in the hands solely of the Government or major News suppliers.
Anyone of us could be the next victim not just the celebrities. I can't afford the Court costs!

Mamie I'm with you - haven't the press done well getting so many people to equate voluntary regulation backed up by statute with state control. For goodness sake! The public interest defence would remain anyway so for example the MPs expenses scandal would still have emerged. Why do you think current safeguards haven't been enforced? Apart from the police failing, the sanctions are nowhere strong enough and anyway, it's not redress that's the issue - once lies have been told about you, or you've been pilloried like the McCanns what's money? What we need are sanctions so strong that the papers would have to really think hard before lying - I'd suggest not only should apologies have to be in the same place in the paper as the original story but in the paper for as many days as the original stories were run then after that the paper should not be published for as many days as they ran the offending story - and remember public interest defence remains

Mamie

That is a fair question to ask.

I think Levesons report was good but he gave every indication that he too wants to keep a 'Free press'. He said he does not want statuary control but he is affirming the need to tighten the reins on the press. He wants them to higher the bar BUT if they do not all join upto a regulatory body THEN he said the press would need to be 'underpinned' by law. That to me is not the same as the Hacked Off and Milibands call for enshrining regulation into law from the minute Levesons report was placed in their hands without giving time to really think about any pitfalls. Leveson is not God, he had a job to do and he did it very well but like all reports they are advisory.

'Underpinning' by law, that has so many connotations which would need to be studied and debated. For Miliband and co. to say they want ALL of Leveson complied with has a whiff of trying to desperately get the popular vote. That could come up and bite their bum in the future and they would be seen as the parties who stopped the 300 year old Freedom of the Press.

I despair at politics at the moment. Spin, hypocrisy and saying what the public want to hear without due diligence to the subject is utterly ridiculous. This sort of politics would bring back hanging if the public were to get their emotive way.

It was the Dowlers situation, especially the lie the N.O.T.W. had deleated Millies messages, that set the seal for the public outrage. I am not defending the press, what happened re phone hacking was clearly wrong. The point is it was the press themselves who managed to bring this sordid tale to light and the following Police actions. This would probably have been more difficult for them to do had Levesons report been acted on it's entirety if you look at some of the points suggested.

There are a lot of people, including M.P's, who are out for revenge on the press after their shoddy affairs and financial 'discretions' were put into print. Yes I feel for the McCanns but Levesons report goes further than discussing their treatment with the press. It is a diverse report and ALL aspects have to be given credence. The Devil is in the detail.

Do you not think that the Leveson report is intellectually rigorous, POGS? I haven't read it, but I understand that it is four volumes, three thousand pages and longer than Anna Karenina. I did listen to all of Leveson's presentation and it sounded thorough, measured and thoughtful to me. I certainly don't recognise what he actually suggested, in the wilder press reports in some of the papers. Where I think it may be lacking, is in the whole question of the internet, which has of course, made nonsense of ideas of press censorship in many instances. I think we have seen that in the Middle East.

Do I detect a little bit of back tracking by Labour today in the press and on T.V.

I hope there will be some serious intellectual rigour carried out. This issue deserves nothing less.

I think the prospect of any state interference has the potential to 'creep' into an unacceptable level of control in years to come.

This needs careful consideration, not hurried knee jerk laws made on the back of a fag packet to placate the emotional public, it is far too serious a proposal for it not to be debated and scrutinized in a proper manner.

If anyone can answer with an absolute cast iron guarante that in the future no government will alter, enhance or use the press as it's tool then I will say you are not credable. Be under no illusion that the press in Russia are at odds with the government, state interference is rife. We can all say 'That won't happen here' but nobody knows that for sure.

I hope there will be a cross party solution to this and if it does come to a vote in parliament I hope the M.P's have a free vote and not a 3 line whip used.

I am worried that general public are not taking their minds beyond what happened to the likes of the Dowlers and wanting revenge for their terrible treatment at the hands of the press. Leveson goes beyond that level of concern and the potential for loss of freedom of the press has not been given appropriate thought.

If handled wrongly this has the potential to undo 300 years of a system some countries can only aspire to.

Be careful what you wish for.

I agree with you, Mishap. As someone who has worked in the media, but do you see a problem with setting up what already exists for the broadcasting media?
I do see Ian Hislop's point, but I hate the idea of nothing changing for those all too powerful press barons.

Ian Hislop's very valid point is that all the things that the media did (phone-hacking, harrassment, police and other bribes) were and are already illegal, but the police took no action. He is saying that no further legislation is needed - just a proper enforcement of the existing law.

However I do favour a body that can regulate the press and deal with complaints - it needs to be independent of the media, but not government controlled for all the reasons people have said.

Frankly I do not trust the press - having worked for some years on a magazine I had many run-ins with the editor about his attitude to headline-grabbing stories at the expense of mere truth. And I have been involved in various "stories" that made it to the news and none of what was reported bore any relation to what was actually happening.

If anyone wants to join me in signing the petition, the link is here:
hackinginquiry.org/petition/

Actually sel, I don't think it is that simple. I certainly wouldn't call Private Eye right wing! The Sun has backed both political parties in its time, as we know. Probably there are more conservatively inclined papers lined up as anti-Leveson than pro, but the Independent is arguing anti-legslaion too. It is undoubtedly true that the press has immense power at election time and it may well be a brave / foolish move by Ed Miliband and Nick Clegg to come out so firmly against the "old guard" of the press. I am glad that they have done so though. Actally I think most of the argument is around what Leveson's statutory underpinning will look like. If it is just to treat the paper media in the same way as the broadcast media, then I really don't see the problem. Given a choice between Channel 4 news, the BBC and the Sun, I know who I would be more inclined to believe!

Flickety, I agree. What Ian Hislop is talking about is providing remedies/recompense after the event. The Leveson proposals are about prevention of outrageous behaviour.

It's interesting how the split on pro/anti control of the press seems to be a Left/Right one. I'm musing: who has more to gain I wonder?

This article expresses it best for me.
www.guardian.co.uk/media/2012/nov/29/leveson-report-nightmares-not-real

Actually I think the Guardian and especially Nick Davies have a good track record of exposures. Remember the Nick Davies articles on poverty? Flat Earth News is a pretty interesting book too. I like Private Eye and have been reading it for forty-five plus years, but I certainly don't think Ian Hislop is their greatest editor and I don't think they are infallible (nor is the Guardian).
I don't usually agree with Christopher Meyer either tbh.
The people I do trust are mostly saying that this is the press trying to protect the status quo and exaggerating the danger of losing some kind of freedom.
I think they have had plenty of time to clean up their act and have failed lamentably.

I agree with what you say about the victims of press abuses, flickety, but I'm not sure Hislop has missed the point. I'm sure he agrees about the victims too. His point is that the current ways of dealing with press outrages were not used properly.

Ian Hislop misses the point when he says there is already a legal remedy for people treated by the press in the way Chris Jeffries, Millie Dowler's parents and the McCanns were.

The point is that what happened to them should never have happened in the first place and no amount of damages can remove the suffering of the people mentioned above, the pain, fear, devastation and character assasination leaves mental scars that can never be removed

And here is Kurt Vonnegut on the subject of censorship back in 1986.

Private Eye was exposing press outrages long before the Guardian got onto it.

Christopher Meyer, former British ambassador to the USA, is also against press regulation such as Leveson recommends. He says we already have laws to deal with harassment as well. It's in the New York Times which is described as "impeccably liberal" in its outlook.

I have heard elsewhere that our libel laws are extremely complex and difficult. Maybe that's where we need to focus?

My guess would be that it has been the power of the press to make or break politicians that has been part of the reason for the hands-off approach. I listened to Leveson and I had no sense that he was talking about a political appointee having power over what newspapers reported. I ask again, why would it be different from what happens with broadcast media at the moment? If that was being proposed then I would be dead against it.
It wasn't Private Eye who exposed all this, it was The Guardian and the wonderful Nick Davies; they are not against the proposals.
I have signed the petition.

Hislop also says that Cameron (or whoever is PM, presumably) would appoint whoever was in charge of the regulatory committee. How is that "separate" from politicians?

You could be right, mamie, that those laws didn't work. But why didn't they work? Was it because they were not enforced or because they were inadequate laws? Hislop seems to think they should have been enforced. Tricky issue.