This slow motion train crash that has been years in coming.
There has to be regulation of the press outside of law courts, because otherwise a publication can say anything they like about anybody who doesn't hundreds of thousands of pounds to risk in a court case. So whilst We Have The Right To Be Informed (always provided it doesn't antagonize advertisers), we also have the right not to have scurrilous stories written about us.
The Press Complaints Commission, and the Press Council before it, were useless, toothless watchdogs which worked more like customer services departments than regulators, and didn't even investigate most complaints. As making up stories was pretty much the business model of several very profitable publications, scandal piled on scandal. Successive governments dragged their feet for decades because the last thing they want is to antagonize the media that they rely upon to tell the public how to vote.
Finally, and inevitably, there was such a big scandal, over phone hacking, and which affected enough rich and powerful people, that the government had to actually do something meaningful.
The media proposed the usual toothless watchdog that had served the gutter press so well, and everyone else so badly, for 60 years. So not surprisingly, the only one which got approved was the one that all those pissed off rich and famous people set up. Whilst the system is indeed a train crash, the UK media industry were driving one of those trains by allowing self-regulation to so signally fail in the first place, and then when it did not propose an acceptable alternative to Impress.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
