Press regulation in the UK is a difficult thing, its hard not to be queasy about the limitation of a free press but the trouble is that that right has been abused by a small section of the press beyond all reason. I would have preferred to see the problems dealt with through criminal prosecutions of those actually responsible but there is no denying that press self-regulation completely failed to deal with a blatant and endemic problem. Giving unreformed self-regulation a second chance was just never going to work.
However the legislation that got pushed through yesterday seems to be just a tactical patch to deal with newspapers as they are currently constituted. The failure to adequately deal with the internet means we opening a massive amount of legal uncertainty for all forms of news media and there is no final settlement but just something that is going to be kicked around for years for the sake of saving the legislative agenda in this parliament.
Leveson isn't irrelevant but all the discussion of where on a front page an apology could appear indicates where all the thinking has gone in this regulation.