Last Monday, my former colleagues Jonathan Heawood and Lisa Appignanesi launched the Impress project. This is an attempt to devise a new press regulator that is compliant with the principles of the Leveson Report, but also tempered to resist being nobbled by either the politicians or the press. Continue reading
Category: Diary (Page 81 of 301)
Things that happen to me, or things I do
Sitting in a waiting room and browsing the web, three examples of poor fact checking bubble into my ‘stream’:
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Alan Rusbridger, the editor of the Guardian, just gave evidence to the Home Affairs Select Committee, concerning the newspaper’s publication of the Edward Snowden leaks. The Guardian has a live-blog and stream of the session.
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I promised a comment on what form political intimidation of the press might take, under the new system of regulation.
The provisions in the Royal Charter for press regulation, and the associated sections of the Crime & Courts Act 2013, are complex and layered. There are buffers between the politicians (and the wider ‘establishment’) and the press. There are plans for an arbitration service and a body that oversees the regulator, which in turn will try to keep the press both strong and honest.
Supporters of these provisions have emphasised that the politicians will not be able to censor the newspapers or stop stories from being published.
But free expression issues do not begin and end with formal state censorship that we see in hideous regimes like China, Iran or Zimbabwe. There are much subtler ways of exerting pressure on publishers, that nevertheless ‘chill’ (i.e. discourage) the exercise of free speech. Continue reading
The Royal Charter that would establish a body to oversee press regulation was due to be referred to the Privy Council today. But industry bodies representing the press have filed an injunction against that happening. The court will examine the application this morning. Legal blogger and former government lawyer Carl Gardner says judges may grant the injunction for the time being, even as he doubts that any legal challenge by the press will ultimately succeed.
In the Monday editon of the Guardian, Helen Anthony (legal consultant to English PEN) laid out a succinct explanation of just what is wrong with the new regulatory system. Continue reading