Rebekah Brooks: Anti-paedophile campaign 'could have been done better'

The controversial News of the World campaign of "naming and shaming" paedophiles in 2000 "could have been done better", the paper's former editor Rebekah Brooks admitted today.

In her witness statement to the Leveson inquiry, Brooks said some people named by the paper should not have been, and there were "risks of vigilantism".

She said the paper's campaign for "Sarah's law" - following the murder of eight-year-old girl Sarah Payne - was "the most significant campaign that I ever ran".

Brooks said: "We began a campaign of naming and shaming paedophiles. I accept that this could have been done better with more time, but I balance that with a need to highlight this issue while the readers were aware of the story.

"Some people were included in the list that should not have been grouped with serious paedophiles. There were risks of vigilantism.

"Yet, I had looked at the success of Megan's law in the United Staes, which was similar to the law that we were proposing, and in the case of Megan's law there were almost no examples of vigilantism."

She added: "Campaigns formed an essential part of my newspaper career, and led to me engaging very closely with public figures. Plainly, none of them were concerned with the commercial or business interests of News International or News Corp."

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