UK press awaits findings of Leveson report

The UK’s self-regulated press waited on Nov 29 to discover what threats of further restrictions might be placed upon it following the behavior of some news organizations.

The 2,000-page report of a year-long judge-led inquiry into the culture, practice and ethics of the press was due to be published at 1330 GMT, crystallizing 16 months of evidence-gathering from more than 400 witnesses and sparked by phone hacking, the biggest scandal to hit the media since the second world war. Lord Justice Leveson is expected to deal not only with recommendations for future regulation of the press, but also to opine on how the earlier behavior of powerful titles, and their editors and proprietors, affected the conduct of politicians and the UK’s major police forces.
The report is likely to focus attention again on the illegal methods used by some newspapers in the decade leading up to the phone hacking scandal.