What it did mean, that outpouring of grief for Caroline Flack after her suicide, all that shock at the media bile and malice she faced? What did it mean when Princess Diana was killed escaping voracious photographers? At the time the Daily Mail said it would never again use paparazzi; that didn’t last long. Nor does the occasional spasm of sham remorse following the latest media outrage.

This week Danielle Hindley finally won compensation from the Mail on Sunday and its owners, Associated Newspapers, for life-wrecking lies about her. You may not have heard of her, but she’s one of the ordinary people casually mauled by the press. Hindley is a beautician with a small salon in a village outside Leeds. In 2017, the Mail on Sunday sent an undercover reporter whose story made out she was a “cosmetic cowboy” and “rogue beautician”, suggesting she was unqualified and had left a client damaged.

It wasn’t true, but it destroyed her reputation, her mental health and her son’s life at school. The story propelled itself around social media, leaving footprints everywhere. Settling the case this week, the Mail on Sunday admitted, “There was no truth in the very grave allegations”, and that she was amply qualified to practise.

Before resorting to the courts, Hindley complained to the press regulator, Ipso, the old Press Complaints Commission rebranded in 2014 after the hacking scandal, owned and funded by the big newspaper groups. Paul Dacre, then editor of the Daily Mail, helped to draft its code. It found in Hindley’s favour: the paper had “given a significantly misleading impression of the complainant’s conduct because it suggested she was guilty of wrongdoing”. A correction was required on page 2, but when it was due the Mail on Sunday was allowed to tuck it away on page 8.

Not a penny of compensation was paid, and there was no investigation into the methods used by the paper. No surprise, as Ipso has never fined a newspaper, though it boasts of its power to impose fines of up to £1m. On its launch, it was billed as “the toughest press regulator in the western world”.

Hindley couldn’t find a lawyer for a libel case until she was helped by Brian Cathcart, professor of journalism at Kingston University, champion of those unjustly mangled by the poisonous British press. He found one ready to take it forward on a no-win, no-fee basis and the crucial insurance against facing the newspaper’s costs if she lost. Libel law is designed for the wealthy. Despite Ipso finding against the paper, the Mail on Sunday dragged out this case, expecting Hindley to drop it: indeed she took a lower settlement to end it after two years.

This week the Sun reported a huge. £68m loss, mostly owing to still mounting phone-hacking claims. Cathcart says only a quarter of hacking victims were famous; the rest were ordinary people – victims or witnesses or relatives of people in caught up in a story. Read Hacked Off’s record of horrendous press abuse cases in its report Thrown to the Wolves. The attention on Caroline Flack was relentless, especially in the Mail and the Sun. Straight after the news of her death, the Sun deleted from its website a story it had published about a mocking Valentine’s Day card.

The paper pivoted to blame the Crown Prosecution Service for charging her with domestic violence, telling it to “take a long look in the mirror and ask why it pursued its course of action given what they knew about her vulnerability”. Until then the paper had revelled in the allegations against her. Why its publication of a picture of a blood-soaked bed at the alleged crime scene, and other press stories were not in contempt of court would be a mystery, except that would require action from the attorney general. The government has backed off from criticism of the press, and Ipso now has an ex-Tory minister as chair.

Calls for a “Caroline’s law” to protect people from press persecution miss the point: the Leveson report proposed a genuinely independent press regulator that would use its teeth. But in 2018 Matt Hancock killed off the last chance of implementing it. That didn’t earn Theresa May any favourable press: politicians licking the boots that kick them never learn that lesson. Ipso might have vindicated itself and transformed the press by imposing £1m fines and demanding embarrassing apologies as prominent as the original story. But it not only fails to protect individuals; it refuses to take cases where whole groups – Muslims, Travellers, trans people – are vilified.

This week the Mail on Sunday launched Toby Young’s latest self-promoting idea, as-called Free Speech Union, to protect against such abominations as “no platforming”. Odd to choose a platform that abuses its free speech with such regularity on which to launch it. Cathcart thinks the British press is probably the worst in the western world. The wonder is that the public go on tolerating its bullying and tormenting. Labour may be braver next time, with both Keir Starmer and Lisa Nandy in favour of reform.

• Polly Toynbee is a Guardian columnist

• This article was amended on 28 February 2020. An earlier version incorrectly suggested that the Sun had deleted multiple online articles about Caroline Flack; it had deleted just the one about a Valentine’s Day card.