Sidebar: Leveson Inquiry

This sidebar comes from a post I'm drafting that finally isn't a sidebar. The next post will set out things specific to this project (at last) and I hope that everything in this post will suddenly make sense when I make a shorter reference to it by way of example. I got a bit carried away with the example and I thought it might make a better post by itself.

Just today, we have the Lord Justice Leveson's report into the culture, ethics and practices of the press.
 This comes down to an intensely political question: who has the legitimate right to exercise certain powers?   There is a balance to be struck between preventing two awful realities: a corrupt government covering up wrongdoing, and a corrupt media subverting rightdoing. As David Cameron points out rightly we shouldn't rush into setting that balance too soon. Leveson's system is proportional in my very early view, but the Prime Minister is right to ask whether it will be stable or whether once the dam has been breached , the floodgates crumble. The Prime Minister is absolutely right to say that introducing new legislation is harder to do because we are introducing a principle, where amending it will merely mean extending it.
 
That, as Nick Clegg has said, avoiding the opportunity to dive onto a popular bandwagon, is a legitimate concern. Whether this is the side we err on is a matter of debate. We could err on the side of an Ofcom, where we that the press has a huge potential to harm the public, so we should intervene to make sure it abides by rules. Admittedly, defining what constitutes "the press" in the internet age is difficult but we could still say it's better to have more regulation than less. So that's the choice we have and both sides are not unreasonable.

That said, the Leveson proposals certainly avoid the state licensing of the press, which was a huge concern for publications like The Spectator, while making it painfully obvious that the press should see where their self interest lies. So a statute that sets up these incentives and gives legal underpinning to the body set up sounds proportionate to me. Also, the provision of a clause that obliges the Government to protect the freedom of the press should mean any change to the law would be legally contestable. (Or maybe that should be a thing, I'm not a lawyer.) Either way I don't think it likely that we have politicians who are that suicidal to cross the line.