Illustration: Simon Letch
By the end of the month, the British Prime Minister, David Cameron, should have a copy of Lord Justice Leveson's report on what do do about the demon press.
Leveson has one of the more difficult tasks imaginable. How to improve the standards of the press while not trampling on the delicate flower of press freedom.
It is the issue the federal government has had trouble resolving in its grapple with the Finkelstein report on media ethics and accountability.
Next month, Leveson will be in Sydney and Melbourne, talking up his report and discussing privacy and media intrusion.
As something of a curtain raiser to the discussion that will take place here and there, a visiting London lawyer was on our shores last week.
Charlotte Harris is a media specialist and partner of Mishcon de Reya, a celebrated law shop that, among other things, handled Princess Di's messy affairs.
She also represents about 60 clients suing News International and its employees for phone hacking invasions of privacy.
She's a member of Hacked Off, the organisation that has done more than most to lobby government and prepare submissions about making the British press accountable in law.
She did the rounds here of the Australian Press Council, journalists and people on Finkelstein's team.
Harris and her colleagues are not quite so hung-up about finessing the delicate balance between freedom of the press and press regulation.
She wants an independent regulator, funded by the state, with teeth to enforce a proper code of journalistic ethics.
For anything less to emerge from Leveson would be a ''waste of time and money''.
Harris deflates a few of the popular myths about the evils of a decent regulatory system.
''They talk about a free press but the biggest censorship comes from the proprietors and the editors,'' she says.
''They abuse the notion of free speech. Sometimes, there should be thought given to fair speech.''
In Australia, she says, with one media baron dominating the landscape, ''you are already in a state of censorship''.
She warned, as if we needed to be reminded, that Leveson will be accompanied by an ''inflated and false moral outrage by the media'' - that is, bullying.
We know, because that was what greeted the Finkelstein report. We've seen incredibly pompous and leaden editorials in the Murdoch press, largely misstating the case about ''bringing the media to heel'', while the local News satrap, Kim Williams, threatens to take the government to court if it meddles with his luxurious patch.
Fairfax, too, has been critical of Finkelstein's proposed news media council. The cry is that a statutory body would endanger public interest journalism, such as the investigations into the Obeids, the Catholic Church, James Hardie, St John's College and so on.
Quite how that is so is hard to fathom, because none of those investigations, and many more besides, have fallen foul of the journalists' code of conduct.
People who helped the media inquiries, even in very minor ways, have also been attacked. There's a similar pattern. Confected notions of conflict were levied at media academic Margaret Simons, just as already in Britain the Daily Mail has whipped up a hysterical attack centering on David Bell, one of Leveson's ''assessors'' who is also a founder of the Media Standards Trust, which gave birth to Hacked Off.
Of course, there's more than a whiff of self-interest issuing from the ebbing presses of the great newspapers. Nonetheless, Leveson will issue a riveting report. His brief includes investigating the relationship between the press and the police, and the press and politicians.
Imagine what could be unearthed here, if a commission of inquiry was tasked with those delvings.
Tub-thumping and misinformation aside, what precisely are the objections to a truly independent statutory body, with government funding, charged to uphold a code of conduct to which mainstream journalists already theoretically subscribe?
Break that down a bit. By independent, I mean independent of government, Parliament and the press. By statutory, I mean legislation that requires the main publishers to be members of the body. How the obligations of membership are structured are many and varied but, at a minimum, it would mean an acceptance of the findings of the regulator and on appeal, the courts - just as members now are expected to accept the rulings of the voluntary Australian Press Council.
The substance of the enforceable requirements would be the existing media code of ethics, nothing more or less. Penalties should be fines or in extreme cases, waterboarding. Jail would be too good for editors and executives and in any event just makes them into martyrs.
Then there's government funding. This automatically throws up the bogyman of political control but other government-funded outfits that manage to operate independently - the ABC, the Productivity Commission, the Bureau of Statistics, etc - are not fingered as mouthpieces of the government of the day.
To try to head off what the press sees as the scariest possibility emerging from Leveson, Lord Black of Brentwood, the chairman of the Press Standards Board of Finance, which funds the voluntary Press Complaints Commission, has concocted a compromise model.
This is not the same person as Lord Black of Crossharbour, the Canadian born, ex-media tycoon and walking, talking thesaurus, who was recently set loose from a Florida prison.
Black of Brentwood, a Tory peer, wants the self-regulatory regime retained with powers to summon editors to give evidence, launch investigations and levy fines of up to £1 million ($1.54 million).
Imagine the screaming if the Press Council came up with something like that here.
What Black's saying is really an old refrain. If we make self-regulation look more meaningful, please, we beg you, give us one more chance.
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