THE editors of The Scotsman and The Herald are due to give evidence on Wednesday to the Leveson Inquiry into press standards.
And in today’s Scotsman, editor-in-chief, John McLellan, writes extensively about the inquiry, pointing out that changes to press regulation hinted at by Lord Leveson last week are effectively already taking place at the Press Complaints Commission of which he is a member.
He writes: “It is fair to say the inquiry has chugged along at a fair pace, but what readers may not know is that the process of press reform has been moving at an even more breakneck pace behind the scenes as the new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, former Conservative cabinet minister, Lord David Hunt, prepares for his organisation’s demise and its eventual replacement with a new, beefed-up body.”
Among the reforms he expects to be introduced is the removal of newspaper editors from the PCC’s adjudication process.
But he does raise a concern that a new body might not have Scottish representation, raising the possibility of there being “no scrutiny of decisions affecting Scottish publishers by anyone with knowledge of our distinctive legal and political landscape”.
