According to Thangam Debbonaire MP, Labour’s current shadow culture secretary, there is nothing more to be done about press regulation. When asked, recently, if a Labour government would revive Part 2 of the Leveson Inquiry, or do anything else to hold the press to account, she answered:  

“There is already media regulation, there is already the criminal and civil law. We don’t have plans to do anything, any new legislation in that area, no”.

‍This is a depressing response, demonstrating an utterly ill-informed view of press regulation under IPSO and the continuing seriousness of press malpractice seen on the ground. As we know, IPSO is a sham regulator, whose members seem entirely unperturbed by its ostensible power to hold them accountable, through fines, if necessary, for serious and systematic breaches of its code.

Anyone in doubt of that might look no further than a series of ghoulish tweets posted by The Times chief news correspondent, David Brown, on Sunday 9 June, which recorded the moment that Dr Michael Mosley’s body was secured and transported, by sea, to the coroner’s office. In one video, a team of four stretcher-bearers are seen, at close distance, carrying the body (identifiable as such, with arms neatly folded) along the pier to the waiting seacraft, and then lifted carefully into it. The video is captioned: ‘The body believed to be Dr Michael Mosley is carried 80ft from the rocks where he was found to the sea was seeking to reach. He has been missing for five days.’

Users of X have not taken kindly to Brown’s tweet, with responses such as ‘But why post this video? Show some respect’, ‘How disrespectful- imagine how you would feel if this was your family member or close friend’, and ‘Let him have peace and give him some dignity… Disgraceful’ being indicative.As these comments suggest, the concern here is for grieving family members. Ostensibly, the Editors’ Code of Practice is meant to protect the bereaved in these circumstances, so that death does not become a spectacle for morbid tastes. It says that publications concerning death should be ‘handled sensitively.’ An example of this sensitivity can be seen in the Press Association’s coverage of the recovery, in which sections of footage have been tactfully edited to ensure there is no prolonged focus upon the body itself.Not so, Brown’s coverage of the recovery. Its prolonged, macabre focus on the body itself cannot be termed ‘sensitive,’ not credibly at least. It is in breach of the code, for what that is worth.

If, as Debbonaire would have us believe, press regulation is working, then a breach of the code, such as this, should have consequences. It will not. First, and foremost, IPSO has adopted a highly restrictive approach to complaints. Generally, it is only those who are personally affected that can complain. For those suffering from grief, a complaint to IPSO will be the last thing on their mind. Third parties cannot complain unless they constitute a ‘representative group,’ can convince IPSO of their status as such, and can convince IPSO that there is sufficient public interest in IPSO hearing their complaint. These are daunting thresholds as it is.Even if this is met, there follows a long and arduous exchange of views between the publisher and the complainant, in which attrition plays a significant part. Here IPSO acts not so much as regulator but as a butler, doing little more than alerting one party to a message from the other.

If resolution is achieved – which, as I say, may reflect an attritional loss of willpower to continue than a genuinely held belief in a satisfactory outcome, IPSO declares that there has been no violation of the Code. This is significant – the absence of any black mark against its name means that the publisher accumulates no tally in the ledger that would otherwise contribute to the status of ‘systematic’ offender and so edge the publisher closer to that moment of regulatory intervention and possible fine.If resolution is not achieved, then an adjudication will follow.

‍As I have said before, IPSO is extremely lenient toward publishers in complaints about intrusion into grief or shock. It does not seem to matter how undignified or unjust the coverage is, IPSO is committed to the view that reporting on death is of public interest, no matter how it is achieved, it seems.We are left, then, in an unsatisfactory position. To the outside world, as given to us by the actual and prospective government, press regulation is working perfectly. There is no need for any further examination, and those meagre changes introduced by the industry post-Leveson have cured all. To those in the know – or even those that pay careful attention to what journalists actually do and say – things are not right. They are not rosy.

The press continues to cause real harm to real people, just as Lord Justice Leveson noted in 2011/12. The press regulatory regime implemented by the industry still offers insufficient protection to them. It is all very well for MPs like Thangam Debbonaire MP to blithely say that all is well but she is wrong. There is no press regulation. There is the appearance of press regulation. For, if we had real press regulation, obvious breaches of the code such as this could be challenged easily and efficiently, and resolved quickly.

Professor Paul Wragg, Professor of Media Law, University of Leeds - First published on INFORRM