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Britain: Newspapers Protest New Press Rules British Newspapers Challenge New Press Rules
(about 3 hours later)
An array of newspapers protested a new press code on Tuesday that empowers a press watchdog to investigate abuses, order corrections and levy steep fines for misbehavior. The Newspaper Society, which represents 1,100 newspapers, said those provisions would impose a “crippling burden” on publications struggling against the inroads of the Internet. “A free press cannot be free if it is dependent on and accountable to a regulatory body recognized by the state,” said Adrian Jeakings, the president of the society. The conservative Daily Mail commented in an editorial, “The bitter irony is this long-drawn-out debate comes when the Internet — which, being global, has no regulatory restraints — is driving newspapers out of business.” Newspaper owners and editors have so far not signed on to the agreement, which lawmakers agreed to early Monday in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal. LONDON — A day after British lawmakers agreed to ground rules for a new press code, an array of newspapers protested on Tuesday against the attempt to impose stricter curbs on this country’s scoop-driven dailies following the phone hacking scandal that convulsed Rupert Murdoch’s media empire and much of British public life.
In a statement, the newspaper society representing 1,100 newspapers said provisions for fines of up to $1.5 million on errant newspapers would impose a “crippling burden” on cash-strapped publications struggling against the inroads of the Internet.
“A free press cannot be free if it is dependent on and accountable to a regulatory body recognized by the state," the president of the society, Adrian Jeakings, said.
Indeed, the conservative Daily Mail commented in an editorial, “The bitter irony is this long-drawn out debate comes when the Internet — which, being global, has no regulatory restraints — is driving newspapers out of business.”
“If politicians had devoted half as much of their energies to keeping a dying industry alive, instead of hammering another nail into its coffin, democracy would be in a healthier state today.”
Newspaper proprietors and editors have not so far signed on to the agreement announced on Monday and say they were excluded from late-night cross-party talks on the new code while privacy campaigners clamoring for tighter press controls took part in the deliberations. Some indicated on Tuesday that they would not be rushed into responding to the proposed restrictions.
“We need to go back a long way — to 1695, and the abolition of the newspaper licensing laws — to find a time when the press has been subject to statutory regulation. Last night, Parliament decided that 318 years was long enough to let newspapers and magazines remain beyond its influence, and agreed a set of measures that will involve the state, albeit tangentially, in their governance,” the conservative Daily Telegraph said.
Lawmakers on Monday “urged the newspaper industry to endorse the new dispensation as quickly as possible,” the newspaper said. “However, after 318 years of a free press, its detail deserves careful consideration.”
The agreement announced Monday creates a system under which erring newspapers will face big fines and come up against a tougher press regulator with new powers to investigate abuses and order prominent corrections in publications that breach standards.
The deal, struck in the early hours of Monday, enshrines the powers of the regulator in a royal charter — the same document that sets out the rules and responsibilities of the British Broadcasting Corporation and the Bank of England.
That ended a fierce dispute, which divided the coalition government, over whether new powers should instead be written into law.
The idea of legislation raised alarms among those cherishing three centuries of broad peacetime freedom for Britain’s newspapers. They included Prime Minister David Cameron, who said a law establishing a press watchdog would cross a Rubicon — Caesar’s point of no return — toward government control because it could be amended to be even stricter by future governments that might want to curb the press.
But victims of hacking, the Labour opposition and the Liberal Democrats — the junior partners in the coalition — pointed to the failures of existing self-regulation and pressed for a “statutory underpinning” to enshrine the changes in law. That was in line with a central recommendation of a voluminous report published last November after months of exhaustive testimony into the behavior and culture of the British press at an inquiry by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson. His inquiry was called after the hacking scandal crested in July 2011.
There will be minor legislation to accompany the new system. One law will be amended to ensure that changes to the charter — and therefore to the system of press regulation — can be made only if there is agreement by two-thirds of both houses of Parliament. Another change will make news groups that opt out of the new regulatory system subject to higher fines for defamation. Britain’s existing legislation already includes some of the world’s most stringent defamation laws, along with rules governing what may be published on matters relating to national security and judicial procedures.
Mr. Cameron said the new system had averted direct legislation of the press. “I believe it would be wrong to run even the slightest risk of infringing free speech or of a free press in this way,” Mr. Cameron told lawmakers. “We don’t want a situation where politicians will be able to meddle with this system.”
Ed Miliband, the Labour leader, concurred. “Today’s agreement protects the victims and upholds a free press,” he said. “First, in its appointment and the way it works, the regulator will be independent of the press; second, it is a regulator with teeth with the powers to direct apologies and corrections with equal prominence.”
The agreement eased strains between Mr. Cameron and the Liberal Democrats that had raised the likelihood that they might end up voting with the Labour opposition.
In the end, all three main parties agreed early Monday to the system, which Mr. Cameron said should empower a new, independent watchdog to impose fines of up to £1 million, or $1.5 million, and oblige newspapers to print prominent corrections for errors and take other measures to protect privacy. Many details remain unclear.
The drive for a new law was led by a privacy group called Hacked Off, supported by the actor Hugh Grant and the parents of children whose disappearance and loss became the object of tabloid frenzy. In particular, the case of Milly Dowler, a schoolgirl whose cellphone was hacked after she disappeared and was later found murdered, prompted Rupert Murdoch to close The News of the World, his flagship Sunday tabloid, in July 2011.
Since then, the scandal has led to civil suits, criminal investigations, a parliamentary inquiry and the Leveson hearings — scrutiny that coursed through British public life, exposing previously hidden relationships between the press, the police and politicians. The affair has cost Mr. Murdoch’s newspapers hundreds of millions of dollars.
Brian Cathcart, a professor of journalism and one of the founders of the Hacked Off campaign, said on Monday that the use of a royal charter was a “second best” option, but he welcomed the deal and added that “there is a statutory underpinning without doubt.”
The new system “will protect the freedom of the press and at the same time will protect the public from the kinds of abuses that made the Leveson inquiry necessary,” Mr. Cathcart said.
He said at a news conference that the agreement had been struck by politicians “despite the scaremongering of powerful newspaper groups which had their say at the inquiry and didn’t like the outcome.”
Hugh Tomlinson, a lawyer for victims of phone hacking, told Britain’s High Court on Monday that British investigators had uncovered a new conspiracy potentially affecting hundreds more victims. He did not go into detail. More than 100 reporters, editors, investigators, executives and public officials have been implicated in wrongdoing by police units investigating accusations of criminal activity, including phone intercepts and bribery.
Many newspapers had railed against the notion of tighter controls. Mr. Murdoch’s tabloid The Sun published a photograph of Winston Churchill on its front page on Monday, quoting him as defending a free press as “the most dangerous foe of tyranny.”
In T Daily Telegraph, Boris Johnson, London’s Conservative mayor, himself a columnist and former magazine editor, wrote: “Like any strong detergent, the work of the British media may cause a certain smarting of the eyes. But if you want to keep clean the gutters of public life, you need a gutter press.”
The media, he wrote, have for centuries “been lifting up the big, flat rocks to let the daylight in on the creepy-crawlies; and in all that time we have never come close to the state licensing of newspapers.”

Stephen Castle reported from London, and Alan Cowell from Paris.