UK judge issues damning press verdict

LONDON — Britain needs a new independent media regulator to eliminate a subculture of unethical behavior that infected segments of the country’s press, a senior judge said Thursday at the end of a yearlong inquiry into newspaper wrongdoing.

Lord Justice Brian Leveson said a new regulatory body should be established in law to prevent more people from being hurt by “press behavior that, at times, can only be described as outrageous.”

He insisted that politicians and the British government should play no role in regulating the press, which should be done by a new body with much stronger powers than the current Press Complaints Commission.

“What is needed is a genuinely independent and effective system of self-regulation,” he said. “The ball moves back into the politicians’ court: they must now decide who guards the guardians.”

Leveson issued his 2,000-page report at the end of a media ethics inquiry that was triggered by revelations of tabloid phone hacking and expanded to engulf senior figures in politics, the police and Rupert Murdoch’s media empire.

Prime Minister David Cameron set up the Leveson inquiry after revelations of illegal eavesdropping by Murdoch’s now-defunct News of the World tabloid sparked a criminal investigation and a wave of public revulsion.

Parliament will have to approve the legal changes the report recommends, and Cameron is under intense pressure from both sides. He is also tainted by his own ties to prominent figures in the scandal.

Levenson’s proposals will likely be welcomed by victims of press intrusion and some politicians, who want to see the country’s voracious press reined in. But some editors and lawmakers fear any new body could curtail freedom of the press.

Leveson said it was “essential that there should be legislation to underpin the independent self-regulatory system.”

He said the new body should be composed of members of the public including former journalists and academics — but no serving editors or politicians. It should have the power to demand prominent corrections in newspapers and to levy fines of up to 1 million pounds ($1.6 million).

The hacking furor erupted in 2011 when it was revealed that the News of the World had eavesdropped on the mobile phone voice mails of slain schoolgirl Milly Dowler while police were still searching for the 13-year-old.

Murdoch shut down the 168-year-old newspaper in July 2011. His U.K. newspaper company, News International, has paid millions in damages to dozens of hacking victims, and faces lawsuits from dozens more, from celebrities, politicians, athletes and crime victims whose voice mails were hacked into amid the paper’s quest for scoops.

Leveson heard evidence from hundreds of journalists, politicians, lawyers and victims of press intrusion during months of hearings that provided a dramatic, sometimes comic and often poignant window on the workings of the media. Witnesses ranged from celebrities such as Harry Potter author J.K. Rowling and movie star Hugh Grant — who both complained of intrusive treatment — to the parents of Dowler, who described how learning that their daughter’s voice mail had been accessed had given them false hope that she was alive.

Leveson said the ongoing criminal investigation constrained him from accusing other newspapers of illegal behavior, but argued there was a subculture of unethical press behavior in Britain.

While many editors have denied knowing about phone hacking, Leveson said it “was far more than a covert, secret activity, known to nobody save one or two practitioners of the `dark arts.”’

More broadly, he said newspapers had been guilty of “recklessness in prioritizing sensational stories almost irrespective of the harm the stories may cause.”

“In each case, the impact has been real and, in some cases, devastating,” the judge said.

The hacking scandal has rocked Britain’s press, political and police establishments, who were seen enjoying an often-cozy relationship in which drinks, dinners and sometimes money were traded for influence and information.

Several senior police officers resigned over the failure to aggressively pursue an earlier investigation of phone hacking at the News of the World in 2007. But Leveson said “the inquiry has not unearthed extensive evidence of police corruption.”

Leveson said over the past three decades, political parties in Britain “have had or developed too-close a relationship with the press in a way which has not been in the public interest.”

He acquitted senior politicians of wrongdoing, but recommended that political parties publish statements “setting out, for the public, an explanation of the approach they propose to take” in their relationships with the press.

Former Murdoch editors and journalists charged with phone hacking, police bribery or other wrongdoing include Cameron’s former spokesman, Andy Coulson, and ex-News of the World editor Rebekah Brooks, a friend of the prime minister.

Coulson and Brooks were appearing in court Thursday on charges of paying public officials for information.

Cameron, who received a copy of Leveson’s report a day early, is to make a statement about it in the House of Commons later Thursday.

He and other senior politicians insist they will not curb Britain’s long tradition of free speech.

“Everybody wants two things: firstly, a strong, independent, raucous press who can hold people in positions of power to account, and secondly to protect ordinary people, the vulnerable, the innocent, when the press overstep the mark,” Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg said Thursday.

“That’s the balance that we are trying to strike and I am sure we will.”