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| On press freedom day, remember the dead – and the need for common sense | On press freedom day, remember the dead – and the need for common sense |
| (35 minutes later) | |
| Today is Unesco's Press Freedom Day, with journalists round the world saluting the 32 of their number who have died on duty already this year: six in Somalia, six in Pakistan, five in Syria, with Russia, Mexico and the usual bloody suspects weighing in behind. But here in Britain, of course, press freedom poses rather different challenges. Will the Privy Council, come 15 May, rubber-stamp the politicians' favoured royal charter on press regulation or the alternative devised by papers themselves (including Britain's 1,100 local journals)? | Today is Unesco's Press Freedom Day, with journalists round the world saluting the 32 of their number who have died on duty already this year: six in Somalia, six in Pakistan, five in Syria, with Russia, Mexico and the usual bloody suspects weighing in behind. But here in Britain, of course, press freedom poses rather different challenges. Will the Privy Council, come 15 May, rubber-stamp the politicians' favoured royal charter on press regulation or the alternative devised by papers themselves (including Britain's 1,100 local journals)? |
| David Cameron, it's said, is hanging tough. He's sticking with the late-night-pizza charter agreed by the parties and Hacked Off in Ed Miliband's office. No delay, no more negotiation. And no question, alas, of where such determination will lead. | David Cameron, it's said, is hanging tough. He's sticking with the late-night-pizza charter agreed by the parties and Hacked Off in Ed Miliband's office. No delay, no more negotiation. And no question, alas, of where such determination will lead. |
| Papers – whose participation should be "voluntary" according to Lord Justice Leveson himself – won't be signing up. They will risk the threat of "exemplary damages", preparing to fight any such court case in Europe, and push on with their own non-royal alternative instead. Then this parliament or the next will be stuck with legislating something non-voluntary, or sitting back and see how matters develop. | Papers – whose participation should be "voluntary" according to Lord Justice Leveson himself – won't be signing up. They will risk the threat of "exemplary damages", preparing to fight any such court case in Europe, and push on with their own non-royal alternative instead. Then this parliament or the next will be stuck with legislating something non-voluntary, or sitting back and see how matters develop. |
| You can wax pretty hysterical about this, if you wish. Trades unions barons, bankers, press barons: roll them all into one. But it's actually pretty silly. The alternative charter – its recognition body headed by a retired supreme court judge, its various manifestations full of non-press majorities and vetted by public appointments authorities – doesn't in any sense give newspapers an effective veto: because the judge at the top of the pyramid, if cheesed off, could just walk away and bring the whole system crashing down. Common sense means compromise, give-and-take, teamwork. You want a whistleblowing hotline? Write it in. And Leveson's ideas on arbitration, the ones designed to make papers sign up that have sent the local press in the opposite direction? Try them and see. Discuss, mediate, agree – the real point of the papers' charter. Don't stand on your dignity. | You can wax pretty hysterical about this, if you wish. Trades unions barons, bankers, press barons: roll them all into one. But it's actually pretty silly. The alternative charter – its recognition body headed by a retired supreme court judge, its various manifestations full of non-press majorities and vetted by public appointments authorities – doesn't in any sense give newspapers an effective veto: because the judge at the top of the pyramid, if cheesed off, could just walk away and bring the whole system crashing down. Common sense means compromise, give-and-take, teamwork. You want a whistleblowing hotline? Write it in. And Leveson's ideas on arbitration, the ones designed to make papers sign up that have sent the local press in the opposite direction? Try them and see. Discuss, mediate, agree – the real point of the papers' charter. Don't stand on your dignity. |
| Neither version, of course, touches the killing fields of Syria and Pakistan. But Unesco recognises most of the NGOs that have recoiled from Cameron's last stand. One thing does go with another if you want a solution that fits. | Neither version, of course, touches the killing fields of Syria and Pakistan. But Unesco recognises most of the NGOs that have recoiled from Cameron's last stand. One thing does go with another if you want a solution that fits. |
| Alone at the top | Alone at the top |
| America's circulation bureau now adds print and digital statistics together to produce some heady sales figures. But strip online out of those figures – concentrate solely on print – and the top nation's top three stand in splendid isolation. At number one (for all his critics), Rupert Murdoch's Wall Street Journal averaged 1.48 million buyers a day in the first three months of this year. USA Today, at number two, had 1.42 million. And the New York Times – 795,395 – trailed in third. | |
| It's a long way from there to the LA Times at 433,000 and the New York Daily News at 360,000. (If you want to try comparisons, Britain's top five, the Sun, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph, manage 6.2 million a day between them.) | It's a long way from there to the LA Times at 433,000 and the New York Daily News at 360,000. (If you want to try comparisons, Britain's top five, the Sun, Mail, Mirror, Express and Telegraph, manage 6.2 million a day between them.) |