AFTER HIS magnetic if surreal performances on Question Time, Newsnight and at the Leveson inquiry, Hugh Grant will reprise his role as a media ethics crusader in Brussels next week at a forum on media pluralism, called Wider? World? Web?

Grant, who has argued in favour of tougher sanctions for media organisations that break industry codes of conduct, will take part in a panel discussing media ownership at the forum on June 27th.

Perhaps deterred by Grant’s movie-star charm, News International has declined an organisers’ offer to put forward a representative to debate from the same platform, although it has indicated that it will be present at it.

The event will “definitely not be ‘yet another conference on the media’,” according to organisers from Belgium’s University of Leuven, Gray’s Inn in London and Italy’s Centre for Media Pluralism and Media Freedom.

Indeed, it will also feature Pink Floyd’s Nick Mason and Puppet on a String singer Sandie Shaw debating changing business models in music publishing.

The Irish media sector will be represented at the conference by Bob Collins, chairman of the Broadcasting Authority of Ireland, who will talk about the role of national legislators, and Denis Staunton, deputy editor of The Irish Times, who will discuss the diversification of content in the new media age.