The outcome of the Leveson Inquiry will require a new constitutional design for press regulation: responsive to the fall-out from phone-hacking; able to secure both freedom of expression and rights to privacy; and flexible enough to accommodate traditional and emerging journalism. While there is no blueprint from overseas there are instructive lessons from international experiences in relation to such core issues as independence, interplay with statute, funding, governance, core purposes and sanctions.

Lara Fielden, Visiting Fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism in Oxford, will discuss the lessons from a range of countries that share common interests in a free press and a tradition of press councils. She will draw on her report Regulating the Press: A Comparative Study of International Press Councils commissioned by the Reuters Institute to inform the Leveson Inquiry and wider debate on press reform in the UK. Lara is a former BBC journalist and Ofcom regulator, and author of Regulating for Trust in Journalism which sets out ideas on a new cross-platform settlement for standards regulation in the age of blended media.