Andy Kinsey

Today saw the Leveson report published, a report which saw the news (as if we didn’t know already) that our press are not clean and have continuously breached privacy laws and caused harm to families and individuals across the UK. You can read the full report here.

Based on this and watching the coverage from the Commons, with David Cameron’s and Ed Miliband’s statements plus all the questions afterwards I began to realise something. We already have a body for regulating media and press, they are called OFCOM and were established in 2002. They were reformed in 2011 with Cameron keeping his pre-election promise of reducing their remit. (Cameron in July 2009 election said “Ofcom, as we know it, will cease to exist” if his party came to power”, according to Wikipedia, something that is beginning to happen). 

So we have Ofcom they have some power, but clearly not enough to call the press to account. I therefore would call on the government to increase the power Ofcom to appoint a new body to regulate the press and give Ofcom the power to hold sanctions against a press body.

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Finally, as an aside, we need to be clear on what we mean by press. I am a blogger (you are reading my blog) so would I be subject to this body, likely I shouldn’t be but to many a blogger is the press, no if’s no buts. So we need to be clear on who is the press.