I SEE Terry Smith is against control of the press. Even grosser still is the advert in The Press of December 12 on the same subject: “Yes... even phone-hacking was a scandal revealed by a newspaper.”

Excuse me – but wasn’t that a crime perpetrated for and on behalf of a newspaper?

If the press is not regulated by law, then it is lawless. There is no such thing as independent regulation – he who pays the piper calls the tune.

Ken Barnes, North View, Catterton.

• Editor’s note: Lord Justice Leveson praised local newspapers in his report into the ethics and culture of the press, saying their contribution to local life was “truly without parallel”.