Why the internet is fighting back on press regulations
Unsurprisingly for a proposal reportedly drawn up in the early hours of the morning on a diet of Kit Kats and compromise, there are countless flaws in the Royal Charter on press regulation. Whether it merits “statutory underpinning” or not, the biggest, fundamental concern is one sentence, referring to which facets of the press will fall under the new rules.
It’s not just tabloids and inky broadsheets that come under the new regulations, but “websites containing news-related material (whether or not related to a newspaper or magazine)”. Which, as Hugo Rifkind observed in the Times this morning, essentially means the entire internet, whether that be GQ, blogs big or small, or even your average Twitter user. source