Despite a one-sided propaganda campaign by the press to turn their readers against the Leveson reforms, a new YouGov poll [pdf] suggests that the vast majority of the public continue to want tougher regulation of the press, support the full package of reforms and have no faith in the regulator set up by the newspapers.
The YouGov poll commissioned by Hacked Off and published today shows that 57% of the public favour tougher press regulation. A total of 40% believe that Leveson was right to propose independent checking of press self-regulation, with 15% saying he did not go far enough and only 9% saying he was wrong.
A total of 59% have no confidence in a system of press regulation established by the major newspapers. To the question “who do you believe should decide how the press is regulated?” the answers were as follows
- A judge after conducting an inquiry, 33%
- The Government and Parliament, 23 %
- Newspaper owners, editors and executives, 11%
Only 14% of the public think that the behaviour of the national press has got better over the last four to five years, with 40% replying that it was slightly worse or much worse.
In relation to Leveson Part 2, 46% thought that this should proceed, with only 10% thinking it should be cancelled.
The full results of the poll can be found here.
All of these views of the general public run directly counter to those expressed by the recent press anti-Leveson campaign. The press gave wide and misleading publicity to a poll which, it was claimed, supported for one aspect of its position on Leveson. It will be interesting to see how much publicity is given to this new poll.
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