The phone-hacking scandal was a "wake-up call" that made British newspaper executives realise they must change how the industry is regulated, the Financial Times's editor said today.
Lionel Barber told the Leveson Inquiry into press standards that the revelations that culminated in the News of the World's closure in July amounted to a "shocking episode".
He called for the formation of a new independent press regulator with powers to impose fines, require corrections to be published prominently and launch investigations.
Mr Barber told the hearing: "This has been a real shock, what happened at the News of the World, not just in terms of the extent, the industrial scale of phone hacking, but the pattern of lies.
“But also the result, which was shocking: the closure of a national newspaper with a circulation of several million, and a newspaper actually that has done in its own way over the years some very good stories - I am thinking of the fixing in the Test match.
“This was a shocking episode. All of us, I speak for myself, believe that as a result we need to change the way we do business.
“If this isn’t a wake-up call, I’m not sure what is.”
Mr Barber, who became Financial Times editor in 2005, said the new press regulator had to be compulsory and should be something that online news sites such as the Huffington Post would want to join.
“It is incumbent on the industry to produce new credible proposals for independent regulation,” he said.
“That’s the lesson of the phone-hacking scandal, and to a degree it’s the lesson of what’s already come out in this inquiry.”
PA