LONDON — After months of hearings, a long-awaited report on the behavior of British newspapers embroiled in the phone hacking scandal recommended on Thursday a new system of press regulation that would be backed by parliamentary statute, setting up what threatened to develop into an acrimonious political debate about curbs on Britain’s 300-year-old tradition of broad press freedom.
Weighing in at 1,987 pages in four hefty volumes, the report reprised nine months of testimony by 337 witnesses at an inquiry led by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson. The judge was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron to lead a review of newspaper ethics and practices at the height of the scandal that erupted around The News of the World, a now-shuttered Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary.
Exploring an issue with deep resonance in British politics, the report examined the nuances of the relationship between Mr. Murdoch, as the country’s most powerful media baron, and a generation of British politicians. It specifically rejected the suggestion that Mr. Cameron and Mr. Murdoch struck a “deal” trading election support for Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010 for policies favoring the Murdoch empire in Britain.
It also advocated for a new form of independent self-regulation for the newspaper industry that would be much tougher than the widely discredited system that has been in place for the past 60 years. Under the new plan, embraced by Mr. Cameron and other party leaders, the existing Press Complaints Commission would be replaced with a body that would be independent of the newspapers and the government and have wide investigative powers and the authority to set fines of up to $1.6 million.
But the political leaders vehemently split over the Leveson recommendation that the new system be backed by a parliamentary statute. Supporters of the provision, in the opposition Labour Party and the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, but also numerous among Conservatives, saw statutory underpinning as giving the new body real teeth. Opponents, including Mr. Cameron, described legislating any part of the new system as “crossing the Rubicon” on the way to state-sanctioned press controls, and reversing a tradition dating to the abandonment of newspaper licensing in 1695.
“I’m proud of the fact that we have managed to last for hundreds of years in this country without statutory regulation,” Mr. Cameron said, “and if we can continue with that, we should.”
That was countered by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, and, more awkwardly for Mr. Cameron, by Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is deputy prime minister in the coalition government led by the prime minister. Both said that sticking with self-regulation with no legislative framework to sustain it would invite newspapers to slide back into the old pattern of abuses.
Advocates for press freedom in Britain and abroad expressed alarm at the Leveson proposals. “A media regulatory body anchored by statute cannot be described as voluntary,” said Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Moreover, adopting statutory regulation would undermine press freedom in the U.K. and give legitimacy to governments around the world that routinely silence journalists through such controls.”
For Mr. Cameron, the looming political split posed a potentially serious risk because an unofficial head count suggested that a statute-backed system might command a clear majority in the House of Commons. Mr. Cameron and other party leaders went straight from the Commons into a meeting in quest of a compromise, possibly one that would hold the threat of legislative action over the newspapers if they failed to adopt a sufficiently robust system of their own.
The report offered few new insights into the tabloid scandal, which set off public revulsion with the disclosure in July 2011 that The News of the World had intercepted voice mail messages left by anguished relatives on the cellphone of a missing teenager who was later found murdered. Investigations by Scotland Yard have since uncovered what has been described as a web of criminal practices, including computer hacking and bribery of public officials, at The News of the World and a sister tabloid in the Murdoch stable, The Sun, a daily that is Britain’s most widely circulated paper.
While harsh in condemning newspaper practices it said had “wreaked havoc in the lives of innocent people,” the report was sparing in its conclusions about two major figures who have been caught up in the public furor, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Murdoch. Both escaped significant censure, surprising many who expected that Lord Leveson might excoriate them as exemplars of a longstanding tradition of cozy ties between leading British politicians and newspaper barons.
Weighing in at 1,987 pages in four hefty volumes, the report reprised nine months of testimony by 337 witnesses at an inquiry led by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson. The judge was appointed by Prime Minister David Cameron to lead a review of newspaper ethics and practices at the height of the scandal that erupted around The News of the World, a now-shuttered Sunday tabloid owned by Rupert Murdoch’s British newspaper subsidiary.
Exploring an issue with deep resonance in British politics, the report examined the nuances of the relationship between Mr. Murdoch, as the country’s most powerful media baron, and a generation of British politicians. It specifically rejected the suggestion that Mr. Cameron and Mr. Murdoch struck a “deal” trading election support for Mr. Cameron’s Conservatives in 2010 for policies favoring the Murdoch empire in Britain.
It also advocated for a new form of independent self-regulation for the newspaper industry that would be much tougher than the widely discredited system that has been in place for the past 60 years. Under the new plan, embraced by Mr. Cameron and other party leaders, the existing Press Complaints Commission would be replaced with a body that would be independent of the newspapers and the government and have wide investigative powers and the authority to set fines of up to $1.6 million.
But the political leaders vehemently split over the Leveson recommendation that the new system be backed by a parliamentary statute. Supporters of the provision, in the opposition Labour Party and the left-of-center Liberal Democrats, but also numerous among Conservatives, saw statutory underpinning as giving the new body real teeth. Opponents, including Mr. Cameron, described legislating any part of the new system as “crossing the Rubicon” on the way to state-sanctioned press controls, and reversing a tradition dating to the abandonment of newspaper licensing in 1695.
“I’m proud of the fact that we have managed to last for hundreds of years in this country without statutory regulation,” Mr. Cameron said, “and if we can continue with that, we should.”
That was countered by Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, and, more awkwardly for Mr. Cameron, by Nick Clegg, leader of the Liberal Democrats, who is deputy prime minister in the coalition government led by the prime minister. Both said that sticking with self-regulation with no legislative framework to sustain it would invite newspapers to slide back into the old pattern of abuses.
Advocates for press freedom in Britain and abroad expressed alarm at the Leveson proposals. “A media regulatory body anchored by statute cannot be described as voluntary,” said Joel Simon, the executive director of the Committee to Protect Journalists. “Moreover, adopting statutory regulation would undermine press freedom in the U.K. and give legitimacy to governments around the world that routinely silence journalists through such controls.”
For Mr. Cameron, the looming political split posed a potentially serious risk because an unofficial head count suggested that a statute-backed system might command a clear majority in the House of Commons. Mr. Cameron and other party leaders went straight from the Commons into a meeting in quest of a compromise, possibly one that would hold the threat of legislative action over the newspapers if they failed to adopt a sufficiently robust system of their own.
The report offered few new insights into the tabloid scandal, which set off public revulsion with the disclosure in July 2011 that The News of the World had intercepted voice mail messages left by anguished relatives on the cellphone of a missing teenager who was later found murdered. Investigations by Scotland Yard have since uncovered what has been described as a web of criminal practices, including computer hacking and bribery of public officials, at The News of the World and a sister tabloid in the Murdoch stable, The Sun, a daily that is Britain’s most widely circulated paper.
While harsh in condemning newspaper practices it said had “wreaked havoc in the lives of innocent people,” the report was sparing in its conclusions about two major figures who have been caught up in the public furor, Mr. Cameron and Mr. Murdoch. Both escaped significant censure, surprising many who expected that Lord Leveson might excoriate them as exemplars of a longstanding tradition of cozy ties between leading British politicians and newspaper barons.
