There's a sorry spectacle going on these days at the Old Bailey in London, where Rebekah Brooks, former head of British newspapers for media mogul Rupert Murdoch, is on trial in connection with the phone-hacking scandal that has rocked the country's media and political establishment.

Among other things, Brooks testified this week that she sanctioned payments to public officials at least half a dozen times; rebuffed a police request to aid the original 2006 phone-hacking probe; offered a job to a reporter convicted of phone-hacking to keep him from going public with what he knew; and had "gone too far" in attacking those who criticized Murdoch's tabloid empire.

(One example: When former Labour minister Clare Short blasted the topless page three models in the Sun, another Murdoch tab, the paper published a doctored picture of Short, bare-breasted, and accused her of being "jealous.")

Yet Brooks insisted she had not known that phone-hacking was happening on her watch, and claimed she was shocked - shocked - to learn in 2011 that the News of the World tabloid at the center of the scandal had hacked the cellphone of teenager Milly Dowler, who was kidnapped and later found murdered in 2002.

The Dowler revelations triggered a public outcry that led to the tabloid being closed, and Brooks and others being charged criminally.

Spurred on by the Leveson inquiry report, which issued a damning critique of the tabloids, Parliament signed off last fall on a new system of press regulation, giving an independent panel the power to fine papers up to $1.5 million, order corrections and provide arbitration for those victimized by sleazy journalists.

The new rules were roundly condemned by op-ed writers on both sides of the Atlantic.

The New York Times wrote that the regulations "would effectively create a system of government regulation of Britain's vibrant free press, something that has not happened since 1695, when licensing of newspapers was abolished."

Which brings us back to Brooks' trial and the sad state of affairs in which the abuses committed by a few papers are eroding press freedom for all papers in Britain, a nation that is usually seen as a beacon of democratic values.

I've argued that education, not regulation, is what's needed to change the attack-dog brand of journalism practiced at Britain's "red tops," as the tabs are known. The newsroom culture must change.

Why would this approach would work? Because in the U.S., even though the First Amendment guarantees press freedom, no journalist would dream of sinking to the slimy depths plumbed by Brooks and her bottom-feeding cronies. (Not surprisingly, the U.S. news outlets that come closest to the Brit-tab brand of journalism - The New York Post and Fox News - are owned by - you guessed it - Murdoch.)

In the U.S., journalists observe ethical codes, and journalism is seen as a profession much like medicine or law. In Britain it's more often seen as the pursuit of grubby, ink-stained wretches.

Education is key. Journalism programs in the U.S. stress ethics. But as ethics expert Stephen Ward told me, in Britain "there's not a lot of time for journalism classes that teach ethics or history. It's like a factory - you learn to do your job and you do it. Ethics is seen as something that wimps or academics worry about."

That's the problem. And at British newspapers, that's what needs to change.

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