Leveson report: Cameron’s defining moment

I do believe that David Cameron has just pledged to  protect press freedom – and, in effect, reject the most illiberal proposals of today’s Leveson Report. He has asked the media to reform itself, and radically. He accepts the principles of the report and asks the media to ‘implement them, and implement them radically’. But he asks. He doesn’t want to tell. And he draws a very important distinction between the two: parliament hasn’t told the press what to do since 1695 and Cameron doesn’t want to start now.

We argue in our leader in this week’s Spectator that Cameron is a man of principle, a friend of freedom and a pragmatist who will recognize that press regulation would not address the abuses of press freedom.