EmailCritics of current press self-regulation may feel it is on its way out but editors are clearly determined to save it from destruction.
To that end, they have just bolstered the editors' code of practice by introducing new rules that tighten compliance.
The changes also reinforce the centrality of the Press Complaints Commission to the process.
First, editors who breach the code will be required to publish the PCC's critical adjudication in full - as now - but with "due prominence agreed with the PCC's director."
Second, to underline the key role of the public interest justification for publishing a story that appears to breach the code, editors will need show not only that they had good reason to believe the public interest would be served, "but how and with whom that was established at the time."
In other words, there cannot be a retrospective claim of public interest. It must be illustrated that it was the original intention for pursuing a story and that it was properly considered in advance.
In announcing the amendments, the code committee's chairman, Daily Mail editor Paul Dacre, spoke of the changes being "designed to ensure that the normal good practice followed in most newspaper offices" is "enshrined in the code itself."
This, he argued with an obvious nod to the Leveson inquiry, "explodes some popular fallacies about press self-regulation."
He continued in similar vein: "Last year we introduced a rule requiring editors running corrections to agree prominence with the PCC in advance.
"This has helped to kill the myth that they are routinely buried in the paper. Now we have brought the publication of critical adjudications more into line with that. It should dispose of another misconception."
Dacre's references to fallacies, myths and misconceptions are designed to enhance the standing of the PCC at a time when its future is in doubt.
Explaining the public interest amendment, he said it "underwrites the need for editors and senior executives to give proper consideration before they consciously decide to breach the code - something that should never be done lightly.
"They should be ready to demonstrate they have observed this process. Most do it already. This measure should be a safeguard, not a burden."
The Dacre message to Lord Justice Leveson and his team of advisers could not be more obvious: despite the axe swinging over self-regulation, it's business as usual here.
Well, not quite as usual, of course. These necessary changes were prompted, to an extent, by some of the criticisms levelled at the PCC in recent times.
Over the past 20 years, there have been several amendments to the code. They close loopholes that, in a perfect world where best practice is the order of the day, every day, no-one would think to exploit.
Journalism, especially popular journalism in Britain, isn't like that. Its practitioners push at the boundaries, often crossing them.
The code is one way, perhaps the only way, to reinforce those boundaries in order to stifle bad behaviour.
Source: Editors' code administrative team
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