LONDON — The leader of a major inquiry into the standards of British newspapers triggered by the phone hacking scandal offered an excoriating critique of the press as a whole on Thursday, saying it displayed “significant and reckless disregard for accuracy,” and urged the press to form an independent regulator to be underpinned by law.
Dan Kitwood/Getty Images
Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson on Thursday with his inquiry on press standards.
Kerim Okten/European Pressphoto Agency
The British actor Hugh Grant arrived Thursday at the Queen Elizabeth II conference center in London, where Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson was scheduled to release a report on the British press.
The report singled out Rupert Murdoch’s defunct tabloid The News of the World for sharp criticism.
“Too many stories in too many newspapers were the subject of complaints from too many people with too little in the way of titles taking responsibility, or considering the consequences for the individuals involved,” the head of the inquiry, Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, said in a 46-page summary of the findings in his long-awaited, 1,987-page report published in four volumes.
“The ball moves back into the politicians’ court,” Sir Brian said, referring to what form new and tighter regulations should take. “They must now decide who guards the guardians.”
Mr. Murdoch closed the 168-year-old News of the World in July 2011 as the phone hacking scandal blossomed into broad public revulsion with reports that the newspaper had ordered the interception of voice mail messages left on the cellphone of Milly Dowler, British schoolgirl who was abducted in 2002 and later found murdered.
Sir Brian said there had been a “failure of management and compliance” at The News of the World, accusing it of a “general lack of respect for individual privacy and dignity.”
“It was said that The News of the World had lost its way in relation to phone hacking,” the summary said. “Its casual attitude to privacy and the lip service it paid to consent demonstrated a far more general loss of direction.”
Speaking after the report was published, Sir Brian said that while the British press held a “privileged and powerful place in our society,” its “responsibilities have simply been ignored.”
“A free press in a democracy holds power to account. But, with a few honorable exceptions, the U.K. press has not performed that vital role in the case of its own power.”
“The press needs to establish a new regulatory body which is truly independent of industry leaders and of government and politicians,” he said. “Guaranteed independence, long-term stability and genuine benefits for the industry cannot be realized without legislation,” he said, adding: “This is not and cannot reasonably or fairly be characterized as statutory regulation of the press.”
In the body of the exhaustive report, reprising at length the testimony of many of the witnesses who spoke at the hearings, the document discusses press culture and ethics; explores the press’s attitude toward the subjects of its stories; and discusses the cozy relationship between the press and the police, and the press and politicians.
The report devotes an entire section to The News of the World. Using a number of case studies that came from the testimony of witnesses, it described a newsroom under immense pressure to bring in stories exclusively and quickly, full of journalists with cavalier and sometimes cruel attitudes toward the privacy and feelings of the people they were covering. Sir Brian said that reporters regularly obtained illegal information about their subjects, harassed and threatened subjects into cooperating, and concealed their identities in pursuit of stories.
Concluding the section on the ethical practices and culture of the news media, Sir Brian said he recognized that “most of what the press does is good journalism free from the sort of vices I have had to address at length.” But still, he says, “it is essential that the need for a fresh start in press regulation is fully embraced and a new regime thereafter implemented.”
In the current system of self-regulation by a body called the Press Complaints Commission, newspapers effectively regulate themselves. The report urged the creation of a new independent regulatory body with powers to fine offending newspapers up to $1.6 million, made up of people who are not serving editors and should not be either lawmakers or figures from the government.
