If you were drowning, you might not celebrate the lack of appetite amongst the sharks in the ocean in which were submerged. But the Leveson report is out and to read what is left of Britain’s national newspaper industry put forth, between the gulps of sea water, there were hearty cheers. Or perhaps they were just bubbles. Still, forget the media reaction, recall what David Cameron said when he announced the inquiry:

[T]here are three pillars to this. There is the issue of police corruption, there is the issue of what happened at the media, and there are also questions for politicians past, present and future.

Let’s say, for the purposes of discussion, that you had a media outlet which bought information corruptly for entertainment, whose owners and/or executives could provide free political advertising to buy favour or scare off critics, and which traded all of that for commercial advantage for other properties…

Any inquiry might be expected to tackle the issues underlying these relationships: the social, technological and legal factors that might affect them.

Well Leveson didn’t. And the press, so anxious to put themselves at the centre of the story, missed the fact that they were not all in the dock together, with the police and the politicians…