UK Press challenged on regulation

UK Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt has challenged the national newspaper industry to put its house in order by devising a regulatory system free from interference by powerful owners. He added that regulation would also have to apply to their websites, including the video that would increasingly become part of the traditional “newspaper” offering online.

Speaking at the Royal Television Society convention in Cambridge, Sec Hunt said that in the wake of the phone-hacking scandal at Rupert Murdoch’s News of the World, the public would insist on a “system of robust, independent regulation with credible sanction-making power”. While emphasizing that the government would await the results of the Leveson inquiry into the workings of the press and its relations with the police and politicians, he said the current self-regulatory system, centered on the Press Complaints Commission, funded by the newspaper industry, could not carry on. He made clear the government preferred an alternative system in which proprietors were not involved.