by Brian Cathcart

Parts of the press are angry about the self-regulation package that was approved by all the main parties in Parliament last Monday. That is hardly surprising.

However modest and measured the regulatory proposals that Lord Justice Leveson came up with, some newspapers were bound to fight them. However great the majority in Parliament or in the country in favour of change, they were bound to rail against it.

And since they have a megaphone, they are able to make a lot of noise.

We should not be misled by the scaremongering and misrepresentation. The Leveson scheme now to be embodied in Royal Charter is modest and measured. It offers some protection to ordinary people from the kinds of abuses that made the Leveson Inquiry necessary, and it poses no threat to journalistic freedoms.

The judge was extremely careful on this point: nothing in his recommendations should curb free speech. Here is a characteristic passage from his report. He envisaged legislation, but his words apply equally to Royal Charter:

It is worth being clear what this legislation would not do. The legislation would not establish a body to regulate the press: it would be up to the press to come forward with their own body that meets the criteria laid down. The legislation would not give any rights to Parliament, to the Government, or to any regulatory (or other) body to prevent newspapers from publishing any material whatsoever. Nor would it give any rights to these entities to require newspapers to publish any material except insofar as it would require the recognised self-regulatory body to have the power to direct the placement and prominence of corrections and apologies in respect of information found, by that body, to require them.Read more here.

Article 19, the NGO that campaigns for free expression worldwide, sees no objection in principle to the implementation of the Leveson recommendations on self-regulation. Here is what it said when the Leveson Report was published:

Article 19 welcomes Lord Justice Leveson’s recognition that effective self-regulation is the best way to ensure a truly independent and diverse press. Statutory underpinning of self-regulation, proposed by his report, does not contradict international standards on press freedom. The Press Complaints Commission has been woefully inadequate and failed to ensure the accountability and responsibility of the press. A meaningful form of self-regulation is needed.Read the full statement here.

Sir Tom Stoppard, a lifelong pillar of the cause of free expression, has also given his support to the Leveson recommendations on self-regulation. Read him here. Sir Harry Evans, the former editor whose name is eternally linked with heroic investigative journalism, agrees. Read him here and here.

The National Union of Journalists, which is the largest journalists’ organisation in the country, has given what it calls a guarded welcome to the Royal Charter agreement. Its reservations are not based on concerns about the freedom of the press, but about the need for a ‘conscience clause’ in contracts, to protect journalists from pressure to do unethical things, and about the need for more action on plurality of ownership in the media. Here is what the NUJ says.

Yes, there has been concern in the past few days about a danger to bloggers and small publishers, but this is not related to the content of the Royal Charter, and it can be fixed fairly simply.

What happened was that Government clauses of legislation intended to give effect to Leveson recommendations on exemplary damages and legal costs – the key incentives in what is a voluntary system – were badly drafted, almost certainly by accident. Fortunately there is time to amend this by the time the clauses reach the House of Lords on Monday, and there is every reason to believe that all parties will be ready to get it right.

What the Charter and the whole self-regulation scheme need now is time. It is the job of the press to set up a self-regulator that meets the basic standards set out by Lord Justice Leveson. They have, by their own account, been working on this since December and they have spoken of being ready by the summer. If some papers don’t join at the outset, they can join later.

The independent recognition body which must approve the self-regulator on behalf of the public, and which is established under the Charter, will have to be set up, and that too is likely to be a matter of months.

Nothing will be decided this week or next.

Brian Cathcart is director of Hacked Off. He tweets at @BrianCathcart.