Michael Meacher MP

I’m not sure what is the correct collective noun for a pack of editors whingeing, but they were certainly in full cry yesterday at the Leveson inquiry.   It’s a pity it didn’t reflect the extraordinarily candid, and accurate, admission in The Times yesterday that News International was “unable or unwilling to police itself” and that it was “a disgrace” that it had failed to do so.   Amen to that.   But inveighing against State control as a means of heading off any regulation at all simply won’t wash.   Should any one person or organisation control more than one daily and one Sunday paper?    I thnk not.   Should the law restricting monopolistic cross-media ownership between the broadcast and print media, which Thatcher swept to one side in the 1980s to start Murdoch on his way to power, be consolidated and strengthened?   Surely it should.   Should a right of reply be instituted as elsewhere, giving space and prominence equal to that of the offending article?   Surely yes.   How best can new entrants to the media market be encouraged to increase diversity and improve balance in the press?   Not by licensing, but by finding new ways to stimulate such diversity and better balance.   Nearly all of this will require new legislation. (more…)