What next for the gutter press?

Lord Leveson will be publishing his recommendations for the future of press regulation very soon, and those on both sides of the debate are getting nervous. The Hacked Off campaign has a letter in today’s Financial Times opposing plans for continued self-regulation of the industry that is signed by 26 professors in journalism, law and politics. The letter attacks proposals by Lord Hunt and Lord Black for self-regulation which would be underpinned by contracts between the regulator and the publisher which would be enforceable through civil law. It says:

‘We do not believe these proposals to be in the best interests of journalists and journalism. The Hunt-Black scheme is an attempt to perpetuate self-regulation by editors, an approach that has been shown over nearly 60 years to have failed both journalists and newspaper readers – a failure that led to the establishment of the Leveson Inquiry. While the new scheme incorporates some features not seen in the discredited PCC, we believe these changes are insufficient to promote good journalism or to protect the public from the kinds of abuses highlighted so vividly in evidence to Lord Justice Leveson.