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According to sources at www.pressreference.com, Laws in the United Kingdom regulating the press are relatively limited, largely because of the traditional hostility of journalists to state interference and the popular belief that any state intervention can lead inevitably to censorship. Because of increasing unhappiness with the tabloids, however, and because of low levels of public trust for journalists, there was a push for regulation at the beginning of the 1990s, particularly in the form of privacy laws. The press escaped state regulation at the time by setting up the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), an agency of press self-regulation. “The Press Complaints Commission, which was established 1991, was patterned after the Broadcasting Complaints Commission.16 members were involved, including members from the tabloids. Tabloid editors were involved in creating the Code of Practice that would guide self-regulation” www.pressreference.com . As of June 2002, the 16 points that was involved in the code of practice were accuracy, opportunity to reply, respect for privacy, restraint from harassing sources and other laws dealing with the media.

The success of the PCC continues to underline the strength of effective and independent The Obscene Publications Act dates to 1857; according to, Lord Campbell who was the introducer of the Obscene act, the act was "intended to apply exclusively to works written for the single purpose of corrupting the morals of youth, and of a nature calculated to shock the common feelings of decency in any well-regulated mind." This Act obviously affects the Internet, videos, and novels more than journalism. There was another act that came in 2000, called the European Union’s Human Right’s Convention. “Article 10 protects freedom of expression as a fundamental right”. This helped the newspapers from libel actions, which were harmful to their newspapers and damaged their reputation.

The Official Secrets Act,...