U.K. editors told to craft own rules

LONDON — Prime Minister David Cameron met with the country’s top newspaper editors Tuesday 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 phone-hacking victims and many lawmakers for a new regulatory system backed by parliamentary statute.

After the meeting at No. 10 Downing St., a Twitter post in 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.

The meeting between the prime minister and the editors came five days after a long-running inquiry into phone hacking and other potentially criminal activities by British newspapers published a 2,000-page report that gave as its principal recommendation the creation of an independent, self-regulatory body backed by law to replace the largely discredited Press Complaints Commission.

The report, by Lord Justice Sir Brian Leveson, set off an acrimonious dispute between those who are deeply wary of the implications for press freedom in Britain if Parliament passes a new law, and others who argue that the newspapers - particularly the country’s rambunctious mass-circulation tabloids- have demonstrated that parliamentary action is the only way to ensure compliance with the new, independent regulatory measure that both sides in the dispute say is needed.