The Sunday Telegraph published a letter yesterday signed by over 450 British Muslim scholars and leaders expressing ‘serious misgivings’ over the Coalition’s Marriage Bill legalizing same sex marriage. The Marriage Bill returns to the Report Stage in Parliament today.

In the letter, signed by a plethora of imams and Muslim leaders, they assert their “responsibility to fulfil our sacred trust to God and present our view on these proposals on behalf of the Muslim communities we serve.”

The letter reinforces interventions by other religious leaders and states:

“We support the numerous calls from other faith leaders and communities who have stood firmly against gay marriage and instead support marriage as it should be, between a man and a woman.”

You can read the letter and the full list of signatories here.

Press reform campaign group Hacked Off are urging people to write to the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport, to object to the rival Royal Charter proposed by newspaper groups Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, News international and Telegraph Media Group.

The rival Charter, put forward last month, falls considerably short of the recommendations proposed by Lord Justice Leveson in his Inquiry report published last November, and contained in the Royal Charter agreed in cross party talks in March.

Among notable concerns for Muslims is the industry’s refusal to entertain a robust third party complaints clause, viable independence of the press regulator, wider consultation on the Code of Practice, and omission on the power of the regulator to ‘direct’ apologies – effectively meaning the press can continue to evade ‘due prominence’ in publishing corrections and apologies.

You can submit a letter to the Secretary of State rejecting the industry’s charter via the Hacked Off website, here.

The Guardian reports on the Orwell Prize winner, Professor A T Williams, for his book on the brutal death of Baha Mousa at the hands of British soldiers serving in Iraq.

Mousa died in September 2003 as a result of injuries sustained from beatings and cruel treatment at the hands of soldiers stationed in Basra. His death and questions over the conduct of British soldiers led to an inquiry headed by Sir William Gage into the events of September 2003 and the failings of soldiers and officers of the British Army.

Judges awarding the prize for political journalism, Nikita Lalwani, Arifa Akbar and Baroness Joan Bakewell, said Williams "dissects and analyses with a clear-eyed determination to unpick the lies from the truths of this case, yet, for all its forensic detail, the book grips us emotionally, and has as keen a sense of storytelling as a horror story or courtroom drama. Ultimately, the greatest achievement of this incendiary, eloquent and angry book is that it humanises Mousa beyond the iconic and infamous figure he has become in his death. It was written in the spirit of Orwell's journalism".

The Guardian covers the publication of research undertaken by the Media Standards Trust into press coverage in the 100 days prior to the publication of the Leveson Inquiry report last November.

The study analyses press coverage from 14th July 2011, the day after the Leveson Inquiry was announced, until 28th November 2012, the day before the report was published. A total of 2,016 news articles from 18 national newspapers were analysed.

The research shows that nine national titles published no positive opinion of the inquiry into the Culture, Practice and Ethics of the Press. The titles, Daily Mirror, Sunday Mirror, Daily Express, Sunday Express, Sunday People, Sunday Times, Sunday Telegraph, Daily Star and Daily Star Sunday, “were part of a wider pattern of "overwhelmingly negative" coverage of the inquiry into press standards, according to the Media Standards Trust study of more than 2,000 articles,” The Guardian notes.

The MST study shows that a single narrative dominated the coverage and that narrative was largely negative.

The research also shows that “negative coverage of the judicial inquiry "increased drastically" in the 100 days before the report was published, with articles in this period five times as likely to contain only negative viewpoints as only positive ones.

“Newspaper leader columns grew more adversarial on the eve of the report, according to the research, with 23 out of the 28 articles containing only a negative analysis of Lord Justice Leveson's scrutiny of the press.”

Tabloids fare worse in the analysis with “34 out of 43 articles…found to be "negative only" by the researchers, compared with 62 out of 85 reports published by broadsheet newspapers”.

The analysis is not all that surprising given that the newspaper groups that rejected the Royal Charter and devised an alternative, omitting some of the most significant recommendations put forward by Lord Justice Leveson, are none other than the parent groups of the nine titles listed above, Associated Newspapers, Express Newspapers, Trinity Mirror, News international and Telegraph Media Group.

The lack of objectivity and patent disregard for the criticisms levelled at the industry’s workings by Lord Leveson should come as little surprise in the case of the worst offenders of ethics, News International and the phone hacking scandal. But such also extends to those who have gained most of the weakness in the extant Press Complaints Commission and the feebleness of self-regulation as it currently operates. In a list compiled by Media Standards Trust of titles that have breached the code most frequently, the Daily Mail tops the list.

The wider consequences on the failure of the press to present an even and balanced argument on the issues raised by the Leveson Inquiry is captured by the author of the MST study, Gordon Ramsay, who writes:

"The strength and vitality of the UK press stems in large part from its ability to present the public with a wide range of authoritative and accessible views on often complex policy issues.

"However, the data gathered here shows that, where press coverage has expressed a view on the Leveson Inquiry, one viewpoint has dominated. Though much of the coverage of the inquiry during the public hearings was neutral, comment and opinion pieces were overwhelmingly negative."

The MST study certainly reinforces arguments advanced by groups pushing for independent self-regulation of the press on the basis that the current system is grossly failing and that the industry is too important in shaping public opinion to be left to its own devices.