The Press Complaints Commission in the UK has raised standards of reporting there, the chairman of the commission has told an international conference in Dublin.
Lord Wakeham, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission in the UK, and the minister charged by former prime minister Mr John Major with press controls, spoke of the benefits of self-regulation at the annual meeting of the Alliance of Independent Press Councils of Europe, which opened in Dublin yesterday evening and continues today.
He said that when he was asked to draw up proposals for statutory regulation, the difficulties quickly became clear. Firstly, there were enormous philosophical difficulties. A statutory system would have meant the end of centuries of press freedom.
Secondly, there were great practical difficulties. Many editors made clear they would just ignore controls such as laws to ban the use of telephoto lenses.
"It would also have led to a number of high- profile court cases in which editors and journalists would in reality have become martyrs for press freedom at the hands of an over-mighty state."
Using civil, rather than criminal, law, and introducing a civil wrong of invasion of privacy would only be of use to rich people who could afford to use it, and to the corrupt and crooked who would want to misuse it.
There were also difficulties in enacting laws that did not contain a public interest defence for newspapers, without which newspapers would not be able to fulfil their role of scrutineer and watchdog. "We were therefore faced with the alternative of trying to make self-regulation work," he said.
The self-regulation system now in place in the UK, the Press Complaints Commission, has three elements that help ensure it does work, he said.
It is an entirely self-regulatory body, funded by the newspaper industry. It is based on a code of practice written by editors themselves. But, while financed by the newspaper industry, it is entirely independent, with nine of its 16 members having no connection with the industry.
"The PCC has significantly raised standards of reporting over the course of 10 years," he said.
Referring to the issue of compensation, which is not granted by the PCC, he said that the vast majority of people simply wanted a correction in a newspaper.
If there was a system of such a body awarding damages, it could become a badge of honour and a marketing tool, as happened with some publications in France, he said. However, critical adjudication by a professional body, and the accompanying admission by an editor that he or she has broken the rules, was a deterrent to poor standards.
The editor of The Irish Times, Mr Conor Brady, said the ordinary citizen should have access to a system that could provide a quick, easy and effective solution for someone who had complained about a newspaper article.
Speaking on behalf of the National Newspapers of Ireland, Mr Brady said: "Apart from the readers' representative route, which does not exist in all newspapers, the only course open to a person who feels aggrieved or wronged by a newspaper article is to take legal action. This can and does often take years, and does not come cheap."
Mr Brady said the ordinary citizen was not going to take action. "Those who resort to the courts are the wealthier members of the society and those in the know.
"Ordinary citizens often have grounds for complaint. But they do not have a means to air that complaint if they do not receive a satisfactory response from the newspaper.
"And under Irish law it is difficult, impossible sometimes, for the newspaper to make a satisfactory response because to make an apology is an admission of liability."