Commenting on David Cameron’s decision to end cross-party talks on implementing the Leveson Report, Professor Brian Cathcart, Executive Director, Hacked Off said:
This is a shameless betrayal of the victims of press abuse.
It also raises two fingers to all those members of the public who wanted to see change after the Milly Dowler phone-hacking revelations two years ago.
The Prime Minister has walked away from talks in which other parties were trying desperately to accommodate his views on a Royal Charter.
Instead he has chosen to throw his lot in with powerful national newspaper groups, whose actions were condemned in the Leveson Report. His version of the Royal Charter would have paved the way for a regulatory system little different from the discredited Press Complaints Commission.
He allowed the newspapers to rewrite Leveson so much that they would have been able to pick and choose which complaints their self regulator dealt with and would have given the self regulator little power to tell a paper to give an apology or a correction due prominence.
Worse than that, the editors would have been able to write their own rules and handpick the people who ran the regulator.
This was just the sort of regime we had before Leveson and it was designed to protect the interests of editors and proprietors rather than the public.”
All recent polls show that around three-quarters of the public want effective press regulation, if necessary backed by law. We believe that most Parliamentarians feel the same way and we hope that now that the issue is finally going before Parliament we will see a clear statement that this once-in-a-generation-
opportunity is not going to be lost. David Cameron is trying to portray this as an issue of press freedom. No serious person believes that the Leveson recommendations on press regulation pose any threat to freedom of expression.
Cameron is trying to raise a smokescreen to hide his dirty dealings behind closed doors with powerful press barons who don’t want to have to be accountable when their newspapers –to use Lord Justice Leveson’s words – ‘wreak havoc in the lives of innocent people’.
To read what all 3 party leaders have said about Leveson and press regulation click here.
who is running the country
rupert murdock it seems
is it any wonder that people dont bother to vote
is it any wonder that people dont bother to vote and what exactly have the conservatives got in common with any of the other parties? they are ruling on their own, it seems
Shame on you David Cameron. How will we be able to trust that anything you say in the future will have any truth in it? You stood up and said you wanted change and have then thwarted every attempt for it to happen. You have sold us all out for the sake of keeping the press ‘happy’.
Are there any politicians with two old fasioned attributes – honesty and cedibility. David Cameron is in the process of loosing touch with the real world. Power has corrupted.
As we know from the last few years, Cameron is in the pocket of Murdoch and company. Now is the time to really put up a fight and get his tainted proposals voted against on Monday. What was the expensive Leveson Inquiry all about if its proposals are not implemented in full?
Why spent millions of £’s on the Levenson Enquiry only to ignore the recommendations.
David Cameron is more concerned about what the media think that what normal voters want – that’s because he knows the power of a biased press and he wants the press on his side at the next election.
“No serious person believes that the Leveson recommendations on press regulation pose any threat to freedom of expression”. You could go write for the tabloids you so despise