PRIVACY PRESS LAW courts doing IPSO's job?

HUGE story, and I'll develop this post in time for 2016 exams as a core case study.

Whilst wider than the complaints-based PCC, IPSO's remit is typically narrow, one limitation on its potential to be an effective, inactive regulator. It will not, for example, consider ownership - one of Chomsky's five filters in the propaganda model.

A judge has just dramatically toughened press regulation through a court case.

Such are the profound implications - what future is there for the tabs stripped of the kiss and tell? - that this case is bound to run to multiple appeals, with The Sun the paper injuncted from publishing and Murdoch bound to resist a ruling that rips the heart out of his cash cow's core appeal.

He'd be wary of going beyond UK courts though, with EU rulings on privacy notably tougher on the media's freedom to publish and sympathetic to the individual's right to privacy - one of the reasons the Murdoch press is so vigorously, viciously anti-EU (not exactly a democratic position - but hey, while there's no regulator to look at ownership or to seriously consider biased reporting...).

Whilst it's always tempting to celebrate any diminishing of tabloid power, there is a major democratic issue at stake. UK laws, and court rulings form law until Parliament decides to pass statutes overriding these, have a tendency to be applied far beyond their original purpose.

The Murdoch-led twisting of the public interest defence into the free market 'whatever the public is interested in' was attacked by Calcutt and Leveson, and the Culture Select Committee to boot.

Nonetheless, ANY limitation on press freedom needs to be very carefully assessed and scrutinised. For this celebrity couple today read a politician tomorrow ... centuries of progress following the abolition of the Star Chamber and the later Fox's Libel Law reforms being reversed; the rich and powerful being handed a new gag on unfavourable media coverage?

As I said, a HUGE story...

The injunction is back: entertainer blocks extramarital affair story http://gu.com/p/4hn8m?CMP=Share_AndroidApp_Blogger