Leverson report

Just in case you havn't noticed Lord Leverson has for the past year been investigating breach's of the law and the relationship between the press, the police and politicians. This was sparked of due to phone hacking including the the phones of murdered children and there families.

The recommendations would place a similar legal independent regulatory body in place for the print media as there presently is for television media (ofcom) and not as some reports have claimed on the build up of the report some sort of state control of what's in print. This would replace the present Press complaints commission which is a self regulated body made up of a panel from the newspaper's themselves.

There is petition going around to implement the report in full link below if anyone wants to sign it.

link 

an independent regulatory body like the FSA?

fat lot of good they did.

 Err no you are confusing your regulatory bodies the FSA where the go to for financial services.

The recommendations on the report are different to the legal power's the FSA have over the services industry are regulating a different business in a different way and have different powers. And it's better than nothing which is what we have at the moment. Has something come up in one of the editorials by any chance comparing the two?

ok thanks for clarifying. it's newspapers and not financial services. i understand that the point being that an independent regulatory body (established in 2000) didn't stop rampant financial mismanagement in our banks.

and unethical behaviour in the banking sector wasn't even done in secret...it was done in plain sight. at least News International had the decency to be sneaky.

i'm not opposed necessarily (and I signed your petition)...i just don't want another toothless regulator. I would like more details as to how it would work.

the Daily Telegraph illegally obtained the information on MPs expenses and published them in the public interest. that is not the type of journalism I would like this proposed body to discourage.

and there's no need to roll your eyes mr cheeky pants.

We live in a society where only a minority cares about politics, and an even smaller minority understands the implications. On this basis any government elected today will succeed or fail based upon the support of the major papers, it would be a political suicide to support curbs to their behaviour. If you were Prime Minister would you agree to the recommendations?

EKGO - if I were a politician I'd be totally in favour of a more closely-regulated press.

I think we, as consumers also have a responsibility.  Don't buy the papers that print the rubbish you don't want to read.  Complain if your normally respectable paper prints something you think is wrong.

The regulators are only going to be able to enforce what we as the public want.  We can lobby the politicians to get them to create the sort of regulator that we want, but how do the politicians know what that is?

The trouble is that lots of people are willing to criticise and agree that the current situation isn't ideal, but not many people actually get off their arses and do anything about it

I agree that people who buy filth like The Sun are just as corrupt as the people that write it.

There will be many reasons people read the Sun, some for the sheer comic reasons, then there's the Tits or whatever, live and let live.

I could describe it's readers as disinterested or lacking understanding in real politics, and maybe that would be a little crass, but to call them corrupt is not reasonable

I intentionally didn't name any specific papers as everybody will have their own idea of what a good paper is.

You might buy a paper for a specific section - for example a lot of people claim to buy the Sun because it has a good coverage of sport.  That doesn't stop you from complaining to the paper if they also write stuff you find offensive or if you feel that their tactic for getting stories are immoral

I was reading a fishing magazine a few years back at break time at work. A lad sat next to me held up a copy of The Daily Sport and said "You should read a proper paper like this mate. It's got loads of tits in it." 

Says it all about some people, doesn't it? 

Dude completely agree about another toothless regulator why was so keen to share the link. At the moment there is a political fight between a few different camps about what the new regular should be and and while I don't think I know all the ins and outs of what the report will give. It would be backed by law instead of the other proposal which as far as I can see is just another self regulating body just re-hashed. It would have no power if one of the paper's local or national just said we don't care, unlike the ofcom that can force conduct or take a tv channel off the air if misconduct carries on. (it's happened see fox news uk)

Not saying that if the report was done in full that it would in all cases be better but it's different circumstances and also a very different business to the FSA.

For me it's slightly biased because a good mate of mine worked for one of the paper's and got so disillusioned they moved away from the uk the first chance they got.

Plus I can still remember some of the things that where said about one of the cases that where looked into as part of the leverson report that were discussed at some length on here on a thread about the McCann's. Which supliced me a lot and found slightly vile if I'm being honest. I've done voluntary work on and off for a few years working with kids and grown-ups who have been the victim's of some domestic violence and various other assult's/problems. Some of the folks who had commented on the thread where and still are good friends but found the way the information they had even after the family had taken the newspaper's had been taken to court disturbing at a time they had lost there son.

Sorry for the eye rolling mate.

ok, here's my sixpenneth

Leverson looks in depth at an industry that has allowed many to bring it into disrepute. He listens, considers, clearly decides that some are abject liars. He suggests a range of solutions to improve things - accepting that it is never going to be perfect.

It is clear that the current self-regulation is ineffective.

I cannot actually see what is wrong with what he is proposing. I understand Cameron's lack of courage. But why instigate the review in the first place?

In the words of Midnight Oil, I think it was, ' We have Captains not courageous..'

But then Leveson went and ruined his report into standards in the media by copying bits of it from that well-known infallible source of information, wikipedia.

The current situation does seem to be ineffective, but it's not really self-regulation.  Hacking into phones is, and was, illegal, and despite what some journalists may have believed, you're not allowed to self-regulate when it comes to the law of the land.  I don't really see how any new regulator would be any more effective than the police in such things - they're all open to bribery & corruption, or simply turning a blind eye.

Look at what they have in Italy, A loony who owns a media empire decides to make himself prime minister, and by using the power of the media, he can!