On 24 March the Guardian’s editor, Alan Rusbridger, wrote an article entitled "We need reform and a free press. This will require both time and openness". In it he gave a revealing account of the behind-closed-doors dealings that took place between editors and Conservative ministers in the months that followed the publication of the Leveson report at the end of November.After an agreement between editors on 5 December 2012, he wrote, ‘a long period of private negotiations began with Conservative ministers. What had seemed reasonably clear-cut on the morning of December 5 became mired in hand-to-hand fighting over the detail.’He explained: ‘The press started introducing new conditions – for instance, that newspapers should be able to veto even the "independent" members of the regulator if they didn't like the look of them.’ And he described how ‘officials kept introducing new clauses in a bid to accommodate the new wishes of the press, but these, in turn, seemed unworkable’.Rusbridger made plain that he disliked and disapproved of the covert nature of these negotiations, which flew in the face of Lord Justice Leveson’s call for an open and transparent political process.However, he wrote, ‘when the detail of the proposed deal emerged blinking into daylight in mid-February most papers were prepared to support it – albeit through gritted teeth, and with some detail still to sort out’.This ‘deal’ between the press and Conservative ministers was a long way from the Leveson recommendations and so was not acceptable to Labour and the Liberal Democrats. A month later, in mid-March, cross-party agreement was reached on a very different, Leveson-compliant Royal Charter with accompanying legislation.Rusbridger’s version of events has since been challenged in a document prepared by other leading representatives of the press: Lord Guy Black, executive director, Telegraph Media Group; David Newell, director, Newspaper Society; and Peter Wright, editor emeritus, Daily Mail Group.Their account is also revealing and is set out below, with comments:Alan Rusbridger's account of the events which led to last Monday's widely condemned all-party agreement to impose a Royal Charter on the press ignores a number of inconvenient truths.The Delaunay breakfast [of 5 December] was organised by the then Editor of The Times acting in concert with two other editors whose newspapers bear only a tiny percentage of the cost of newspaper regulation. They claimed to speak for the industry but failed to understand that, with no representatives invited from the regional press or magazine industry, who between them carry 45 per cent of the cost, that could not be the case.Although there was a universal feeling that it was a positive meeting, there was also a worry that it was an attempt to bounce the newspaper and magazine industry into accepting Leveson's recommendations without debate.It was concluded the industry could not overturn a system of regulation constructed over many years without further careful thought, and it was agreed that all the editors present would go back to talk to their lawyers.The idea of a Royal Charter had been introduced the day before by the Government – without any detail - at a meeting with the Prime Minister in 10 Downing Street. It was this that led to the opening of talks with ministers, after other editors discovered that Oliver Letwin had given a private briefing on the subject to the Guardian.Comment: This refers to a meeting between the Prime Minister and the national newspaper editors on 4 December 2012. It was reported at the time that the Prime Minister had told them that they had to implement the Leveson recommendations ‘in their entirety’. It appears to have been at that meeting that the editors agreed to meet at the Delaunay restaurant the following morning.The industry's representatives at these talks [with ministers] were not two Tory peers, but a group of four including the Legal Director of Trinity Mirror, and the Director of the Newspaper Society, both representing the regional newspapers so regrettably excluded from the Delaunay meeting. When appropriate the group of four was supplemented by others, including representatives of the Guardian, the magazine industry and Scottish publishers.Comment: This paragraph refers to what was clearly a sustained series of negotiations between the press and Conservative ministers. (Elsewhere, the Mirror representative, Paul Vickers, has spoken of ‘intensive talks’ lasting two months.) Details of these have never been revealed. Although government ministers were taking part, the public has never been told how many meetings there were, who was present, or what was discussed.Far from these meetings being kept private, the ministers involved made it clear that they were simultaneously reporting their outcome to meetings with other political parties and Hacked Off. No industry representatives were invited to these parallel meetings which were at least as numerous, and by all accounts longer, than those held with the industry.Comment: These meetings were certainly not discussed with, nor were their outcomes reported to, Hacked Off. The so-called ‘parallel meetings’ are presumably the formal cross-party talks on the implementation of Leveson. Contrary to the impression given here, representatives of the press did attend the cross-party talks on at least one occasion, though again no minutes were published.It was during the course of meetings with the industry that ministers produced the scheme for exemplary damages which has been so roundly, and rightly, condemned by all newspapers. Other editors also shared the Guardian's doubts about a Royal Charter, and presented an alternative scheme to arrange recognition through a charitable trust, but ministers dismissed it.Comment: The so-called ‘scheme for exemplary damages’ was one of Lord Justice Leveson's recommendations which was included in the Government's earliest draft of statutory provisions to accompany the Royal Charter. If editors were surprised by this, it can only be because they had not read the Leveson Report. The ‘alternative scheme’ put forward by the press to arrange recognition through a charitable trust has never been made public.Nevertheless a great deal of progress was made over the recognition criteria, with agreement reached on all points except the method of appointments to the new regulator, over which the Guardian had reservations, and the arbitration service, which the regional press and magazine editors feared could result in unsustainable cost.Comment: The fruit of this ‘agreement’ between representatives of the press and Conservative ministers was the Conservative draft “Royal Charter [pdf] published on 12 February. The role of the press in writing it was not made public, but it was obvious in the text: the charter comprehensively watered down the Leveson scheme with the aim of giving editors and proprietors exactly the kind of tame self-regulator they always wanted.It was at this point that Lord Puttnam introduced the first of a series of wrecking amendments that led to last Monday's debacle. The gist of The Guardian's 2000 words is that all this happened because the industry negotiated in private. Far from it – the results of those negotiations are there for all to see, in the draft agreement published by the DCMS on February 12.Comment: The writers have tinkered with the order of events here. It was only as a result of Lord Puttnam’s amendments to the Defamation Bill, and the overwhelming support they received in the Lords on 5 February, that the Conservatives were forced to publish their dodgy draft charter a week later. (One reason for peers’ anger was the continuing secrecy.) And significantly that draft was not presented at the time as a joint Conservative-press document; it was plainly thought wise to conceal the role of editors in writing it. Further, Lord Puttnam’s amendments were not ‘wrecking amendments’ – the Defamation Bill could have been brought into law with them in place.What a pity that the Guardian's response was to advocate statutory underpinning, now rejected by every liberal paper around the world.Alan Rusbridger is right when he says we need reform and we need a free press. And right when he says we can't achieve both at speed and in the dark. That is why we need to let the dust settle on the rushed legislation of the last week and decide how best to tackle both tasks.Comment: Allowing the dust to settle and engaging in some calm reflection seem like good ideas.It was never right for Conservative ministers to attempt to renegotiate the Leveson recommendations with the press. The editors and proprietors had had their say at the Leveson inquiry – indeed they were given far more time to make their case than the victims of press abuses. And the judge had found that for years newspapers abused their powers and damaged the lives of innocent people while hiding behind a ‘self-regulator’ they knew was not fit for purpose.For ministers to sit down and talk to the same editors about which of the Leveson recommendations they would accept and which they would not was not only a disgrace in itself but a betrayal of the victims of press abuses to whom David Cameron had several times made personal promises of firm action.It is little wonder that the talks were held in secret and that ministers tried to cover up the role of editors in writing the draft charter that David Cameron published on 12 February. We should be grateful that Nick Clegg and Ed Miliband stood firm, and that ultimately they persuaded Cameron to see sense and accept a charter that can deliver what Lord Justice Leveson proposed.