Prime Minister Blair in London on Tuesday. (Reuters)

London, June 12: Tony Blair hinted today at new restrictions to curb an increasingly sensationalist media, while admitting that New Labour’s obsession with “spin” had fuelled press cynicism.

In a farewell lecture on public life, he said the British media behaved like a “feral beast, just tearing people and reputations to bits”. He said senior figures in public life had become “totally demoralised” by the completely unbalanced nature of reporting.

The outgoing Prime Minister said relations had always been fraught, but now threatened politicians’ “capacity to take the right decisions for the country”. The emergence of Internet-based news and 24-hour television news channels meant reports were “driven by impact”. He said that there was a need for the distinction between news and comment to be reasserted.

With newspapers increasingly moving online, he said the regulatory systems for papers and TV needed to be revised. Currently they are monitored by separate watchdogs.

“As the technology blurs the distinction between papers and television, it becomes increasingly irrational to have different systems of accountability based on technology that no longer can be differentiated in the old way,” Blair said.

The Prime Minister acknowledged that he had “contributed” to the deteriorating situation with the media by “spinning” too much in the early days of New Labour.

“We paid inordinate attention in the early days of New Labour to courting, assuaging, and persuading the media,” Blair said.

“In our own defence, after 18 years of opposition and the, at times, ferocious hostility of parts of the media, it was hard to see any alternative.”