Editors warn of chilling effect of media regulation

London: The editors of the News International-owned Times and Sunday Times have told the Leveson inquiry they were implacably opposed to any form of statutory regulation of newspapers because of the "chilling effect" it may have on the press.

Six months after the phone-hacking scandal erupted, the editors of the now defunct News of the World's sister titles said they supported radical reform of press regulation but not through legislation.

Their evidence to the inquiry on Tuesday contrasted with that of the Guardian's editor-in-chief, Alan Rusbridger, who was also testifying. He has proposed a "regulator with teeth" and a statutory underpinning.

James Harding, the editor of the Times, told Leveson that any new press regulator needed to be "muscular and independent", but he feared the judge's landmark investigation into press ethics would lead to an act of parliament that would stifle the press.

He added that if the outcome of the inquiry was a "Leveson Act", even one just offering a statutory backstop to an independent press regulator, politicians would be given unacceptable power over the press.

Harding said his concern was that such an act of parliament would give a "mechanism to politicians to loom over future coverage" of politics. The temptation to introduce amendments to this legislation "would have a chilling effect on the press", he added.

Email access: Journalist disciplined

Times editor James Harding told the inquiry on Tuesday that he had disciplined the reporter involved for accessing the email account.

He said in a witness statement: "There was an incident where the newsroom was concerned that a reporter had gained unauthorised access to an email account. When it was brought to my attention, the joumalist faced disciplinary action. The reporter believed he was seeking to gain information in the public interest but we took the view he had fallen short of what was expected of a Times journalist. He was issued with a formal written warning for professional misconduct."

Times sources subsequently identified the reporter as a 24-year-old former graduate trainee, Patrick Foster. They said he had openly disclosed that he guessed security questions for an anonymous email account run by a Lancashire detective, Richard Horton.

Horton failed in a subsequent legal bid to protect his anonymity, and the Times "outed" the police constable in June 2009. Horton's blog, which had won the prestigious Orwell prize for its descriptions of a police officer's life, was closed down and he was officially reprimanded by his police superiors.

Harding did not disclose the reporter's identity in his Leveson witness statement, nor did he reveal that the hacking had led to a published Times article. The Times did not state in its original story that the blogger's identity had been obtained by penetrating Horton's Hotmail account. It said Foster had "deduced" Nightjack's identity.

Earlier witness statements, by News International's chief executive Tom Mockridge and the Times' lawyer Simon Toms, did not disclose that unauthorised email access had resulted in a published article. They referred only to "attempted" access allegedly denied by the reporter. Mockridge later corrected his statement.

The "outing" of Nightjack stirred up controversy at the time, with some bloggers arguing that it was morally wrong to expose a writer and thus close down a widely-valued publication.

Foster, who has declined to speak about the affair, maintained at the time that his action was justified in the public interest because Horton had given details of sex attacks in his blog which could be traced to individual incidents, and had therefore revealed details which should have been kept confidential.

In his amended statement, Mockridge said Foster had subsequently been "dismissed following an unrelated incident". Foster has subsequently written freelance articles for both the Guardian and the Daily Telegraph.

— Guardian News