A PCC replacement may well revise the PCC Editors Code guidance over reportage of children, but if anything they're likely to make it stricter still. The PCC made much of the changes they made to tighten up the Editors Code on this.
Either way this makes for a useful example: it clearly shows that media regulation extends far beyond the formal regulators themselves - in this case it is the Education Secretary, not the Culture, Media, Sport Secretary enacting this change on press and media regulations.
You can read the full article below, or here on Greenslade's Guardian blog.
Surely freedom loving Gove cannot defend press restrictions?
Here's education secretary Michael Gove speaking to the Leveson inquiry in May this year about regulation of the press:
"I have a prior belief that we should use the existing laws of the land and individuals and institutions should be judged fairly, on the basis of the existing laws of the land… And that the case for regulation needs to be made very strongly before we further curtail liberty."Gove went on to express what he described as a strong "bias, a prejudice, a predisposition to favour free expression" and spoke out against current libel laws.
It would not be far-fetched to say he was passionate about the cause of press freedom.
From today, however, Gove's department will be seeking to enforce a law that most editors, probably all, believe to be inimical to press freedom.
Under section 13 of the Education Act 2011,
