Reacting to the uproar over press intrusion following the death of Princess Diana, the Press Complaints Commission asked editors yesterday to voluntarily adopt "the toughest set of industry regulations anywhere in Europe."
"Motorbike chases, stalking and hounding are unacceptable - and editors who carry pictures obtained by them will be subjected to the severest censure," said the commission's chair, Lord Wakeham.
"I have found that editors across the industry have been of the same mind - times have changed - and we want to change with them," he said in outlining the new code at a news conference.
However, work continued on details of the code, including conflicts between an "overriding public interest" and personal privacy - questions which are acute in coverage of Britain's royal family and government officials. No timetable was set for when a final code would be issued.
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Editors already have agreed not to pursue Diana's sons, Prince William, 15, and Prince Harry, 13, who are back at their boarding schools a month after their mother's death Aug. 31 in a Paris car crash.
Nine photographers and a press motorcyclist, most of them French, are under investigation in Paris for their alleged roles in the crash, which also killed Diana's friend Dodi Fayed and their driver, Henri Paul.
When the code is finalized, editors will have to justify the behavior not only of their staff, but of any freelancer whose material they use, and if they expose someone's private life they will have to show there is an "overriding" public interest.
Wakeham's proposals cover five main points: protection of children, discretion at times of grief, avoidance of harassment, a redefinition of privacy, and raising the threshold of public interest that would justify intruding on someone's privacy.
"I'm suggesting a new definition of privacy so that people ... where they have a legitimate right to think they are in private, they should be in private," Wakeham said.
Personal privacy would include family life, an individual's health and personal correspondence, he said. Restaurants and churches as well as homes would be off-limits.
Charles Moore, editor of the Daily Telegraph and a stern critic of some of his fellow editors, said the code was at a very early stage of drafting.
"I think there remains considerable disagreement about exactly how far you should go in defending the idea (of) privacy, and we at the Daily Telegraph want to go a lot further than the tabloids," Moore told the British Broadcasting Corp.
Skeptics don't think the currently restrained attitude toward the royal family will last unless code violations are punished by heavy fines.
The self-regulatory body is composed of newspaper editors. It acts only in response to complaints from the public and has no powers of enforcement. All it can require is that the newspaper print the commission's ruling on that complaint.
Broadcasters, meanwhile, are subject to statutory regulation.
Heritage Secretary Chris Smith, the Cabinet member who deals with media issues, said the government expected newspapers abide by their new code.
Wakeham said he consulted members of the public, legislators and Diana's brother, Earl Spencer, who blames the tabloid press for her death and is campaigning for a privacy law.
There were no easy solutions to the problem of paparazzi, who generally are freelancers, he said.
"The market place in which they operate is global, and no actions that we can take on our own in this country could alter that in any way," he said.
Wakeham is trying to get national and regional photo agencies to subscribe to the code - but it will not cover foreign agencies, the source of most paparazzi pictures.
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