By Michael Stott & Kate Holton (Reuters) 
British newspaper editors, in crisis after revelations of illegal phone-hacking and other ethical lapses, recognised that Fleet Street had to mend its ways but appealed to the government not to crush Britain’s cherished free speech with draconian laws. “We understand that we have to stand together, we have to clean our house,” Financial Times Editor Lionel Barber told a September Thomson Reuters debate in London on the future of the press. “Or else we face statutory regulation which nobody wants.”
Britons’ patience with their misbehaving press finally snapped this summer when the top-selling News of the World admitted that it had illegally hacked the voicemail of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler while hunting stories. Victims of tabloid phone-hacking want tougher laws and Prime Minister David Cameron has ordered a public inquiry into press ethics. Top lawyers, editors and politicians agreed during the debate on “The Press We Deserve” that Britain’s existing Press Complaints Commission, a voluntary self-regulatory body, had failed in its duty to keep the press honest but differed sharply over the solution. Sir Harold Evans, Editor-at-large at Reuters, who was hosting the debate, said the British press was in its greatest danger since two journalists were jailed for not revealing their sources in 1963.