Lebedev intervention underlines call for Media Commission

The phone hacking scandal (among other challenges) is now seriously underming the legitimacy of the PCC. Independent owner Evgeny Lebedev’s article in the Guardian is the latest in a long line of heavyweight comments that question the efficacy of the self regulatory body for the UK press. But Jeremy Hunt appears to have missed a golden opportunity to fix this problem. The BskyB – News International deal could have enabled him to strike a new compact and ensure that the UK’s dominant commercial news provider engages with an independent media commission that would discuss the cross media issues of accountability and standards that are raised by the phone hacking affair. I argued back in January that Jeremy Hunt ” could play a masterstroke by persuading News Corp to accept a new regulatory settlement that would not only raise a higher impartiality bar for Sky – addressing agenda setting concerns, but would act decisively to change what is clearly a problematic regime at the newspaper titles and the PCC.”