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The body responsible for overseeing the appointment of a new press regulator could take up to a year to be set up. This is despite a Royal Charter being signed by the Privy Council this week allowing for independent regulation, much to the frustration of newspaper bosses.

Answering critics that newspapers would be vulnerable to political interference, even after cross party agreement on the regulation, the deputy prime minister, Nick Clegg, said this week that 鈥渘o one wants to interfere with our wonderfully vibrant and raucous press鈥�.

The point is, of course, that the British newspaper industry is facing some of the biggest challenges it has ever faced on many different fronts. The dramatic decline in the sale of print editions and the move to online content and multi-media platforms as the main way of presenting news, affects every department within any newspaper whether local or national.

Manuel Castells has described this era as one of multi directional communication. And the Channel 4 journalist Jon Snow, in a recent Cudlipp lecture, said that such a context means that all media now need new structures to realise their potential.

Press regulation in the current media climate is necessarily affected by an era of greater openness and accountability in communications. By setting up their own Independent Press Standards Organisation as an alternative to the Government鈥檚 scheme, newspaper chiefs are acknowledging that their readers, and the public at large, will no longer accept newspapers acting irresponsibly at a cultural level. Readers are now more able to see and to understand as well as responding to injustice in an age of hyper-interactivity.

About a year ago John Tiffany, Associate Director of the National Theatre in Scotland, commented that the crisis in journalism resembled a mysterious Old Testament fog. In a newspaper article he reflected that the old commandments of journalism 鈥� we shall not lie 鈥� we shall not sell out 鈥� we shall not simplify 鈥� we shall not corrupt - were distorted by the pressure of newspaper profitability which, he said, was appearing to make the industry sick.

Those old commandments have enhanced the reputation of British journalism in many parts of the world for decades. But the theologian Timothy Radcliffe has underlined that finding a moral code by which to live or operate is much more than a simple set of commandments or rules.

Rather, and this is certainly true of the newspaper industry at this moment time, a solid ethical framework also involves discernment, trust and the building of relationships to ensure a strong foundation for the future.

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