Campaigners welcome agreement on press regulation
Media reform campaigners yesterday backed a cross-party deal on industry regulation claiming it would protect press freedom as well as victims of newspaper intrusion.
Hacked Off said using a royal charter to back a new watchdog was the “second best” option but added it believes the regulator will be “genuinely independent” under the agreement.
Director Brian Cathcart said the measures included an essential statute to prevent ministers interfering in the system at a later stage.
At a press conference in central London, he said: “The Royal Charter that they have accepted will introduce a new system that will protect the freedom of the press and, at the same time, protect the public from the kinds of abuses that made the Leveson inquiry necessary.”
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“We believe a charter is second best but we believe that this charter, endorsed by the three leading parties today, can effectively deliver his (Leveson’s) proposals on self-regulation.”
Hacked Off member Jacqui Hames said: “The most important thing for me is that the regulator has to have some teeth.”
Fellow member Mike Hollingsworth said he did not feel the proposals would harm press freedom.
He said: “You will not see anything in these proposals which will affect the freedom of the press. It may stop jackal journalism – but that may be a very good thing.”
2 Comments
by mcupis
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 11:12AM
“Totally agree with you Dave. Three years ago the media exposed the cheating that was going on by politicians with their expenses. If the media is regulated by politicians, who holds them to account in the future?”
by capndave
Tuesday, March 19 2013, 10:47AM
“This decision is a national disgrace and one we the people will rue for a long time to come.
We have laws in this land that more than adequately cope with such situations. If proof of this be needed I would respectfully suggest we would all be able to go out this coming Sunday and purchase a copy of the News of the World, or a number of eminent journalists would not currently be trembling at the thought of going to prison, nor would certain of their associates now possess a criminal record with "Ex Prisoner" stamped all over them.
We all naturally have immense sympathy for those members of the Hacked Off Group that have been on the receiving end of illegal activities, but many of them were keen enough to garner the support and publicity available from our press, which in some instances helped genuine causes to raise millions of pounds. Others amongst them were able to turn to press 'friends' to bring injustices into the public arena.
The fight they should surely have taken up was with the incompetent police and in particular the cosy relationships the enforcers of the law have with their brown envelope press mates.
Now, of course with gagged journalism imminent, the doors are wide open for corrupt public officials to do as they will, safe in the knowledge that investigative hacks will spend most of their valuable time investigating the consequences of a Royal Charter being placed upon their Crown.
Here's my big worry:
1) The NHS now served well by "Gagging Orders"
2) Local Authorities and their bureaucrats more than protected by "Gagging Orders" and Compromise Agreements"
3) Civil Servants safe in the knowledge they cannot be named by their political masters.
Now we can proudly add number 4) "The Press of Great Britain is at last under the control of Westminster".
Well done, and congratulations to the three unwise, shiny faced, schoolboy leaders, that couldn't even agree amongst themselves who could claim the right to drive this nail into hundreds of years of democracy.
So they all did!”