Ken Livingstone has said he will not "buy off media pressure" by apologising for his concentration camp jibe at a Jewish reporter.

Speaking at his weekly press conference in City Hall, the London mayor refused to concede any ground despite being engulfed in what he described as a "media firestorm".

On Monday, Livingstone was uniformly condemned by the 25 member assembly after again refusing to say sorry for remarks to the Evening Standard's Oliver Finegold, who he also likened to a "German war criminal".

But he insisted the comments were justified on the basis of the newspaper and its parent company's track record.

Livingstone said on Tuesday that he had "been through several of these media firestorms".

"I have always taken the view that if I have made a mistake I will apologise," he told journalists.

"When I went back on my commitment not to stand as an independent I gave a full apology to Londoners.

"When smaller instances have happened, people have been wrongly fined on the congestion charge, I have apologised.

"I am also not going to apologise if I don't believe I have done something wrong.

"You may think my remarks to that reporter, and many others over the years, were offensive. That is purely a matter of judgement.

"If you think they are racist, I think you are wrong.

"It would be very easy for me to buy off media pressure by lying and I am not going to do it."

Media attack

The mayor said that to apologise would be to "hand power" over to the editors of newspapers.

Livingstone added that he would respond to the assembly's censure motion in writing next week, saying he was currently too busy dealing with work related to the London Olympic bid.

The mayor went on to launch a fresh attack on the Standard's sister paper, the Daily Mail.

He described the story as a "confection whipped up by my opponents in the Mail group" before detailing the Associated Newspaper company's own "disgraceful record of anti-semitism".

Former proprietor Lord Rothermere "would have been at the forefront of the queue of collaborators" with the Nazis, Livingstone claimed.

He defended his previous employment by the Standard, saying that under the editorship of Max Hastings it had been "an absolutely excellent paper" but that successor Veronica Wadley had turned it into a "clone" of the Mail.

And he questioned why the paper had chosen to photograph every guest at the reception for gay MP Chris Smith when it did not do so at other events.

Livingstone also said he had been "struck by the support I've had from Londoners" over the row.

"It might very well be the reason I am standing here is because I say what I think," he said in defence of his outspoken style.