According to Guido Fawkes who has read the key points of the just released Leveson report it looks like one hundred and fifty years of newspaper freedom is at an end.  It seems that the Press Complaints Commission will be abolished and a new body ‘underpinned by legislation’ will be set up.

Allowing the same politicians who should be scrutinised by the Press to make laws on what ‘standards’ the Press should abide by,  is really like employing Jimmy Savile to manage a girls boarding school.

Will we be going back to the days of severe taxes and threats to Press freedom that was around in the 18th and 19th Centuries, it certainly looks like it and could be the death knell for the dead tree press.  Like so many other industries it will be killed by regulation.

There has never been a more opportune time for bloggers, we heirs to the radical pamphleteers of the past, the newsprint press is dead, long live the offshore electronic press.

UPDATE FROM GUIDO

http://order-order.com/2012/11/29/how-statutory-regulation-would-work/?utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+guidofawkes+%28Guy+Fawkes%27+blog+of+parliamentary+plots%2C+rumours+and+conspiracy%29

Looks like there will be some form of Independent board of people not associated with the press (that will be the usual crew of parasitical lefties and failed politicians I suppose like Helena Kennedy, or Prescott, or one of the great and not so good such as Sir Robin Wales.  This going to be a nice little earner for the leftist establishment of Human Rights Lawyers, media ‘activists’, Guardian columnists and pushy but unrepresentative special interest groups.

Buy a newspaper today and tomorrow, it may be the last few days where they look and feel like their familiar selves later it may look and feel much more like Pravda.

Links

Guido Fawkes

http://order-order.com/2012/11/29/leveson-says-top-lines/

Press Restrictions in Britain in the 18th and 19th centuries

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/PRknowledge.htm