British Editors Urged to Set Up Regulator

Under heavy pressure from the victims of Britain’s phone hacking scandal, Prime Minister David Cameron met with the country’s top newspaper editors and told them “the clock is ticking” on their pledge to adopt a tough new system of press regulation of their own devising if they are to avoid demands by the hacking victims and many lawmakers for a new regulatory system backed by parliamentary statute. After the meeting at 10 Downing Street, a Twitter post in Mr. Cameron’s name said he had told the editors, representing most of Britain’s main national newspapers, that “they need to set up an independent regulator urgently,” with the implication that the government might otherwise have to bow to demands for a law to put teeth into a new system of accountability.