Press regulation: the reaction from the papers
The three main political parties reached a ‘historic’ agreement yesterday on a new regulatory regime for the press, however the newspaper industry is today being described as “shell shocked”.
The deal means a regulator will now be established by royal charter, but not by a statute passed by Parliament. The charter will say that it can only be amended if there is a two-thirds majority in both houses of Parliament.
“Two very important but relatively small” changes to the law need to be made said Prime Minister David Cameron. The first will affect the Crime and Courts Bill to include a law to make it in interest of publishers to sign up to the new regulator by the legal threat of exemplary damages.
The second change will be made to the Enterprise and Regulatory Reform Bill and will not mention a press regulator, but will ensure the charter can only by altered with a two-thirds parliamentary majority.
Already some newspaper groups are seeking legal advice before taking any public position on the news. A joint statement signed by Associated Newspapers, News International, the Telegraph Media group and Northern & Shell said:
“No representative of the newspaper and magazine industry had any involvement in, or indeed any knowledge of, the cross-party talks on press regulation that took place on Sunday night.
“We have only late this afternoon [Monday] seen the Royal Charter that the political parties have agreed between themselves and, more pertinently, the Recognition Criteria, early drafts of which contained several deeply contentious issues which have not yet been resolved with the industry.
“In the light of this we are not able to give any response on behalf of the industry to this afternoon’s proposals until we have had time to study them.”
In print, meanwhile, the Sun held its front page for the news with the headline “Ministry of Truth…Royal Charter deal like 1984”. Inside a lengthy article said that democracy had been tarnished as an editorial from associate editor Trevor Kavanagh wrote:
“When three political parties stitch up a deal in the middle of the night, you should smell a rat. When it turns out that four parties were involved – including Hacked Off – begin counting the spoons.”
The Guardian’s editorial, however, seemed cautiously optimistic. “Politicians and press regulation: a good deal on paper…” ran the headline, going on to say:
“Rival claims about whether a dab of legislation exclusively concerned with a royal charter that it doesn’t mention amounts to “statutory underpinning” are not edifying, but do no harm. The reality of political compromise is that all must have prizes. Mr Cameron emerges having stood up for the press without being its puppet, Mr Miliband avoids taking on the tabloids alone, and Nick Clegg proves his party can work with Labour.”
However, another article describes “a shell shocked newspaper industry…struggling to come to terms with a sudden all-party agreement.”
The Daily Mail cried: “Oh, what a shambles!” Scathing about what it sees as an attack on free speech, it also said that MPs have produced a press regulatory regime of “fiendish complexity, with layer upon layer of bureaucracy.”
Meanwhile, the Daily Mirror’s political columnist ad associate editor Kevin Maguire described the three main party leaders as “the Stitch-Up Three” saying they had finally had their revenge on a press which exposed the scandal of MPs’ expenses.
“If there is to be statutory regulation it would be more honest to impose it by the front door,” Maguire writes, going on to say that the great irony is that the hacking which shut the News of the World is already illegal. “The laws existed – the problem was they weren’t enforced by the cops.”
The Times‘ front page ran with “Press deal divides parties and alarms newspapers.” The article centred on the “conflicting interpretations” of what yesterday’s deal actually means.