http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-24081193

Sounds good in principle at least.

It does sound good but it would also help if newspapers had to put an apology over the same number of pages and in the same position as the original article, so if they messed up it could mean an apology over pages 1 to 20, and bugger all news that day!

I agree and give the space to the person libelled - they could leave it blank, write their side or even sell / donate it for advertising

Actually that is a good idea, I was thinking 20 pages of apology might be too much.

Whoever wrote the article could stay after school and write out "I must check my facts before I write a story" for 20 pages.

I think with a big article like that, it would be a team effort, I remember three or four page exposes in the News of the Screws were the limit of exposes by one person. A twenty page cock up would be written by a lot of people and the editor would be involved through out.

Libel proposals will have 'chilling effect' on newspaper investigations

http://www.theguardian.com/media/2013/s ... newspapers

Can't help thinking if there's been a proper investigation with journalistic rules on sources etc that that shouldn't be much of a problem in the grand scheme of things. And there's always those 'sources' and 'leaks'.

You know that is abused by certain Scientologists?

The sources and leaks are a way for the press to avoid fact checking. In the US they need two separate sources to verify a story. That would reduce the impact of this. If the newspapers simply did not print the smears from the police they would not get into trouble. Look at the mistakes over that muslim family that was raided, and one was shot in the east end of London. The police came out with some shocking allegations that the press published and were simply not true. If they had actually got their facts verified then they would have not run with the smears and so would not be facing libel actions.