Lord Justice Leveson’s upcoming report into the press standards is will be a “monster, huge”, according to BBC business editor Robert Peston.
Writing on his BBC blog, Peston said he had learnt “three moderately interesting things” from sources close to Leveson about his report into press standards:
First, it will be a monster, huge, Proustian in size (if not in literary ambition).
Second, it is written in the style of a court judgement – with all the recommendations pinned explicitly to the lorry-loads of public evidence delivered to the inquiry in oral and written form.
And, by the way, the reason Sir Brian Leveson is skipping town the moment he reads out his reform proposals, and not taking any questions from the media, is precisely because he is sticking to the letter of his mandate to conduct a judicial investigation: it would be unorthodox for a judge to be interrogated by those in the dock, the media, after passing sentence.
Third, much of the press will loathe the recommendations (that of course is the surmise of my sources, based on their knowledge of what Sir Brian Leveson will say, and their expectation of how it will go down with media groups).
Or to put it another way, the judge has rejected the plea for toughened-up self-regulation desired by the owners and editors of the Mail, Telegraph and Sun.
But Peston added:
Now, as you can see, the defining characteristic of my knowledge of the Leveson report is that I don't know very much.
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