Don't let abuse limit press freedom

A free society without a free press is a contradiction in terms. But in recent days Britain's News of the World phone-hacking scandal has demonstrated that an irresponsible press can threaten freedoms as well.

In its hunger for gossipy scoops, the tabloid apparently paid people to hack the voice mail of individuals up and down British society, from the royal family to terrorism victims to a teenager who was abducted and murdered. The newspaper also allegedly let men accused of murder use its gear to spy on a police detective and his family. A former News of the World editor even said once that the paper paid police for information.

The cozy relationship between News of the World and London police appears to have dampened an earlier investigation which found, contrary to a mountain of evidence, that the newspaper's phone hacking was just an isolated incident.

Since the hacking of the murder victim's voice mail was revealed, enraging Britons across the political spectrum and galvanizing Parliament, Rupert Murdoch's News Corp., which owned the News of the World, has reaped the whirlwind that, for so many years, it sowed.

News Corp. closed the paper. Key Murdoch confidants resigned, and former editors of the newspaper were arrested. The scandal has knocked billions off the market value of News Corp., which owns the New York Post and Wall Street Journal. And it torpedoed Murdoch's hopes of acquiring all of the British Sky Broadcasting Group pay-TV network.

The scandal has reached into the highest levels of British government. The head of Scotland Yard, who paid nothing for several weeks at a fancy spa connected with a former News of the World staffer, has resigned. So has the senior officer who headed the earlier, inadequate police investigation.

The scandal has even rocked the government of Prime Minister David Cameron. Like his predecessors, he had no choice but to cultivate a media baron whose big English newspapers made him tantamount to kingmaker, even if Murdoch did have to use the back door at 10 Downing St. after the election. Cameron's former communications director, since arrested, had been editor of the News of the World -- akin to a U.S. president hiring a former top editor at the National Enquirer as the White House spokesman.

The troubles of the unscrupulous journalists and craven politicians in all this are well earned. Murdoch himself, meanwhile, still doesn't get it. After humbling himself before the parents of the slain teenager, the beleaguered tycoon appeared before a committee of Parliament yesterday, where he was asked if he was responsible for what had happened. Murdoch said no, brushing aside the chance to declare that "the buck stops here," and blamed underlings.

Outrage over the News of the World scandal has prompted calls in Britain for more controls over the country's unruly tabloids, but it would be heaping tragedy upon tragedy if any country, including our own, decided that more press restrictions are required. The wrongdoing at News of the World was already illegal in the United Kingdom. There's no need to sacrifice free speech to prevent a recurrence.