The first detailed analysis of the press industry’s own plan for press regulation – the scheme proposed by the papers to the Leveson inquiry – indicate that it would be dominated and controlled the big newspaper companies and would barely be an improvement on the discredited Press Complaints Commission. The study of the so-called Black… Read more »
Posts By: Hacked off
The real fifth column: News International
by Brian Cathcart It is a marvel of hypocrisy for the Sunday Times to attempt to worry its readers about a ‘fifth column’ in the British establishment that is supposedly led by Sir David Bell, an adviser to the Leveson Inquiry. If the Sunday Times was really interested in those exercising secret influences over important… Read more »
Hacked Off respond to newspaper industry funded ‘Free Speech Network’ poll
Responding to a poll released by the newspaper industry-funded Free Speech Network, claiming to support the continuation of self-regulation of the press, Professor Brian Cathcart, Director of Hacked Off said: Nothing in this survey contradicts recent findings in polls by YouGov and the Carnegie Trust that more than 75% of the public want an independent… Read more »
The poll results the Sun didn’t want you to know
The YouGov Poll commissioned by The Sun, published today on p.6 and headlined “State-run watchdog will gag free press: 75% of Brits see threat to the papers” also found a result less sympathetic to vested interests in the newspaper industry. Asked to what extent, if at all, would you trust newspapers to set up a… Read more »
Independent regulator tops Press Gazette online poll
There’s more evidence of support for some form of statute-backed regulation of the press, coming from within the newspaper industry itself. The Press Gazette’s online poll found 51% of respondents in favour of ‘an independent regulator’, set up via legislation, compared to 42% who prefer a reformed system of self regulation. The survey, which does not… Read more »
Hacked Off responds to Lord Hunt’s speech to the Society of Editors Conference
Responding to Lord Hunt’s speech to the Society of Editors Conference in Belfast, Professor Brian Cathcart, Director of the campaign group, Hacked Off said: This is tired old scaremongering from the industry body which failed to regulate the press effectively for more than twenty years. Nobody at the Leveson Inquiry proposed state regulation. The suggestion… Read more »