Three months to save IPSO

Three months to save IPSO – Damian Tambini | Inforrm's Blog: "The newspapers would be well advised to support a stronger IPSO. In time, they may even need to re-assess their position on recognition under the Charter. After all, Parliament has passed the Crime and Courts Act, establishing the legal framework for the Leveson system of press self-regulation to be put into place.

The Act creates a system of incentives: if you fail to join an approved regulatory system, you are likely in due course to be exposed to considerably higher costs and damages in relation to privacy, libel and other legal risks associated with journalism.

As Leveson himself acknowledged, if membership of a self-regulatory body is to confer such privileges on journalists there must be some form of oversight – to ensure the body is not a sham, as many claimed the PCC was. So the Leveson scheme is an ingenious combination of oversight with multiple protections against interference by government.

But the newspapers that support IPSO are not convinced. For them it is the Charter system of recognition that by definition pushes the regulator over the definitional rubicon from self-regulation to government regulation.

Newspapers are also aware that unlike the PCC, IPSO has no monopoly on self-regulation of newspapers.

The Guardian, the FT and the Independent remain outside the tent and IMPRESS; an alternative regulator led by civil society organisations including local news websites, may seek recognition under the Charter. If it is successful, it could trigger the ‘incentives’ (i.e. the end of press protection from damages and costs) under the Crime and Courts Act. Then all newspapers would have to think again." 'via Blog this'