You’re ‘on Probation,’ Britain Warns Press

The government warned Britain’s tabloid newspapers today to “clean up their act” or face laws to curb sensationalist journalism that has led to huge libel awards.

Home Office Minister Timothy Renton, responding to public anger over the way tabloid newspapers fight their circulation wars, announced the setting up of an independent review of press behavior.

He told Parliament that the investigation will be completed within a year and will be followed by legislation if press behavior does not improve. “Editors and publishers of the national press are on probation in this country,” Renton said. “They have a year or two to clean up their act.”

The review was disclosed as government supporters ensured the defeat of an attempt by opposition Labor Party legislator Tony Worthington to provide victims of unfair newspaper reports with a legal right of reply.

The government, which has had its own quarrels with the press, torpedoed Worthington’s proposals only because it considered them unworkable.

Thatcher Accused

The exchanges in Parliament coincided with a meeting in London of the International Press Institute to discuss accusations by some journalists that Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has eroded press and broadcasting freedom in Britain.

Pressure for reform of the press has resulted from its growing intrusions into the private lives of the famous, sexual smears and blatant invention of headline stories.

The Sun paid a record $1.7 million in libel damages to rock star Elton John last December after admitting that stories about him were untrue.

Worthington’s bill would have created a press commission with power to enforce a right of reply in newspapers found guilty of inaccuracies.

Conservative legislator Sir Nicholas Bonsor, who supported him, said: “The amount of inaccurate rubbish one reads in the newspapers is so appalling that it must be right that someone should be able to rebut it.”

The bill was opposed by all newspapers, some of which complained that the serious press would be penalized for the sins of the tabloids.

Editors of newspapers in several Western European countries attended the press seminar, at which sharp criticism was voiced both of the press and of increasing limits imposed on journalists by the British government and courts.

These include efforts to ban discussion of security issues and the prohibition of broadcasts of live interviews with Sinn Fein, the legal political wing of the Irish Republican Army, which is fighting British rule in Northern Ireland.