"THERE could be no greater example of a failure of ethics and standards than the BBC's covering up of the Savile scandal," thundered the Daily Mail, a best-selling newspaper. Well, maybe. Sloppy and neglectful as the BBC has been, it is unclear to what extent it covered up the predations of its former employee, Jimmy Savile. Nor is there any suggestion that the broadcaster deliberately misled viewers in its more recent blunders at "Newsnight." It has been badly run, but BBC journalists are mostly law-abiding and respectful of the truth. That cannot be said with much confidence of Britain's popular press. Even veteran observers of Grub Street have been appalled by some of the testimony heard by Lord Justice Leveson during a Herculean trawl through the Hades of British press standards. Launched last year after revelations that journalists had hacked the mobile-phone messages of a murdered schoolgirl, Milly Dowler, the Leveson Inquiry has heard anguished testimony from celebrities and ordinary folk badgered by hacks. Dozens of journalists (none of them from the Daily Mail) have been arrested in connection with investigations into phone-hacking and bribery of policemen. The Leveson Inquiry is an important subtext to the Daily Mail's invective against the BBC. Like other broadcasters, the BBC is overseen by a powerful, independent regulator. Newspapers, both broadsheet and tabloid, fear Lord Justice Leveson is about to propose something similar for them. The BBC's recent example suggests this would not lead to error-free journalism. Yet that is the least of the newspapers" hostility. Most papers accept that the existing Press Complaints Commission (PCC), a soft and gummy instrument of self-regulation, must be replaced by something toothier. But they argue that enshrining its independence in law, as Lord Justice Leveson has already indicated he wants to do, would put the Fourth Estate on a slippery slope towards parliamentary control. They also complain that the new commentariat of bloggers and tweeters would be exempt - an irksome exception at a time of slumping circulation, when papers are trying to make online journalism pay. Instead, the newspapers have united behind an alternative proposal for a tough independent regulator with powers to investigate misdemeanours and levy fines of up to £1m ($1.6m). This would be voluntary, like the PCC. Yet the newspapers claim all would sign up to it rather than invite a tougher, legally underpinned alternative. Having done so, they would be bound to its strictures by five-year contracts. The Economist's own solution is for a similar tribunal which would also be a first stop for libel cases - an area where English law is draconian. The indication, however, is that Lord Justice Leveson, whose inquiry has sadly focused on tabloid rather than serious journalism, considers self-regulation too weak. That puts David Cameron in a bind. The prime minister is thought reluctant to pass any law to bring the press to heel both by conviction and in fear of inviting the wrath of the right-wing press. The Daily Mail, Daily Telegraph, Sun and Timesare already scathing of Mr Cameron. Failing to heed Lord Justice Leveson would scarcely be easier for the prime minister, though. It would invite a question of why he set up the inquiry in the first place; and it would be unpopular. Journalists are currently level-pegging with politicians as Britain's least trusted group. And though the Leveson Inquiry suggested that politicians are not quite as in hock to press barons as some suppose, it produced plenty of embarrassments. One was a text message from News International's former chief, Rebekah Brooks, wishing Mr Cameron luck before a big speech, because "professionally we are definitely in this together." Mrs Brooks is now awaiting trial for conspiring to hack phones, as is Andy Coulson, a former editor of the News of the World who became Mr Cameron's press officer. Failing to face down the newspapers, says a gleeful Labour politician, would leave the prime minister "hugely exposed once his best friends are in the dock." The pen and the sword Mr Cameron's cabinet is divided, with several ministers opposed on principle to bringing the press under any form of statutory control. Appearing before the Leveson Inquiry, Michael Gove, the education secretary and a former journalist, warned that this was a threat to press freedom. Boris Johnson, the mayor of London and another sometime hack, shares that view. Parliament as a whole may not. Labour appears ready to sign up to more or less whatever Lord Justice Leveson proposes. So, more cautiously, is Mr Cameron's coalition partner, Nick Clegg. Yet the most intriguing support for a regulator backed by statute comes from within Mr Cameron's own party. On November 8th 42 Tory MPs and two peers wrote a letter arguing for it on the basis that the newspapers" own proposal "risks being an unstable model destined to fail." There is speculation that this was designed, with Mr Cameron's foreknowledge, to give the newspapers pause. Yet it is striking how unabashed the signatories were. They include a conspicuous number of recent MPs, an independent-minded and often technophile bunch. The vengeful press holds less fear for them than for their predecessors, one of these MPs suggests, because they have fewer skeletons in their closets and are likelier to be engaged with voters directly through social media rather than through newsprint. A Daily Telegraph article, which seemed to shoot across their bows by pointing out that some of the 44 may, in the past, have had reason to resent nosy reporters appears to have stiffened spines and aided recruitment to the statutory cause. That suggests the press's hour of reckoning may be unfortunately timed. Newspapers are still formidable enough for politicians to want to see them tamed. But they are now weak enough for that to seem possible.