We must not let the Leveson Inquiry kill the press  One thing I
can attest from spending as much time watching the Leveson
Inquiry as at sundry inquiries into the Iraq war: never has such
a vast amount of legal time been poured into dissecting the
workings of the British press. With more payouts due, many will
think this comeuppance for phone hacking and other crimes, some
serious and some comically venal. Did Lord Justice Leveson, for
instance, really need to re-call the Sun's editor yesterday to
ask if ladies in states of undress on Page 3 are a national
abomination? It would be a very constrained press indeed which
forbids a publisher from bringing us entirely legal images of
Tracy from Wapping getting her kit off.  As tempers fray, the
tone becomes more supercilious and ever more extraneous evidence
is dragged before the investigation. Aside from the proper task
of looking into which regulatory framework would fend off future
law-breaking better than the wan Press Complaints Commission,
the danger is miss