Like you, I haven't read Brian Leveson's report; I doubt whether even Leveson himself has read all of it. But like you, that doesn't stop me having opinions about it, and here they are.
Leveson seems to have opted for some kind of independent Regulator, like the PCC but set up on a statutory basis to prevent the government fiddling with it.
Sounds very worthy, but here are three things that are wrong with it.
First, given that any regulator is inevitably going to proceed on the basis of rules, why are newspapers more likely to obey a Leveson-type regulator than they were the Press Complaints Commission? To put it another way, the press not only broke the PCC rules but the criminal law also. Anyone who thinks a Leveson-compliant regulator would have more of an impact on journalists than the prospect of a prison sentence is crazy.
Secondly, what if some newspaper refuses to co-operate, as the Spectator has threatened? Richard Desmond, it will be remembered, refused to allow his publications to be scrutinised by the PCC. And here's where Leveson gets nasty. He seems to be suggesting that refuseniks will be dealt with by Ofcom, a state sponsored body, instead, and face harsher costs penalties in litigation than publications that comply. But who is head of Ofcom? Why, it's none other than Ed Richards, a former apparatchik of Gordon Brown. In other words, co-operate with Leveson's Regulator or a state-sponsored body with a political appointee at its head will get you. When Leveson says there is a world of difference between his scheme and state regulation he is being disingenuous. Leveson is proposing to use state regulation to compel compliance with his scheme.
Thirdly, the remit of Leveson's Regulator won't apply to the internet. His vast four-volume report apparently devotes only one page to it in a total exceeding 2000. We could soon find ourselves in the bizarre situation that a print copy of an offending newspaper story might fall foul of the rules but an online one might not. It's hard to think of a better way of sinking print media altogether, making it irrelevant in comparison to the net's unrestricted Wild West.
On the whole we get the press we deserve. I bet even the people who have suffered most egregiously from the attentions of Fleet Street - in this case perhaps the Dowler parents and the McCanns - will have read the News of the Screws or the Sunday People in their time. I know I have. Yes, the press is unscrupulous and all the rest, but they are in business because we keep buying their papers. And sometimes they come up with some gold. The phone-hacking story, remember, was broken by a newspaper.
I don't feel terribly sorry for the celebrities like Steve Coogan and Hugh Grant who have added their bleating to Hacked Off's campaign. All of them have at some time or other used the press to further their careers - Coogan has made films for Rupert Murdoch's companies, for God's sake. All of them are free at any time to go and seek a life of suburban obscurity. It's surprisingly easy. People like the Dowlers and McCanns are blameless of course; but hard cases make bad law. Those who hacked their phones are in prison, and some of the people who put them up to it will probably be joining them pretty soon.
Surprisingly, I think David Cameron is right to resist Leveson's self-righteous allure.
