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Your leader on (Judgment on Ipso, 5 September) is apt in its analysis and expectation of a system for the independent self-regulation of the newspaper industry. You express, correctly, a perspicacious view of the Leveson inquiry and its aftermath. It is not too extreme to say that Sir Brian Leveson sought simultaneously to promote freedom of speech for the press as well as the regulation of certain incursions only into matters of privacy. Sir Brian’s report was, as you observe, cautiously welcome, but it has predictably been portrayed otherwise. What you now prescribe for the new organisation that took over on Monday is in line with what I, as the last chairman of the Press Council in all-too-short a time (1988-90), endeavoured to achieve. It was Pressbof (the industry’s newly created paymaster in 1988) that ordered the disbandment of the Press Council. It should be imperative that Ipso is adequately funded, at the insistence of the new chairman, Sir Alan Moses.
The Press Council was composed, as to half of its membership, of non-journalistic persons from a wide variety of occupations. The history (including the independent element in its chairmanship since 1966) was virtually ignored by Sir Brian, on the grounds that I could give evidence only on historical matters that were not strictly within his terms of reference. The historical aspect of the regulatory system before 1991, when the Press Complaints Commission took over (20 out of the 1,978 pages of Sir Brian’s report), is, sad to relate, inaccurate in several important respects.
Sir Louis Blom-Cooper QC
Chairman of the Press Council 1988-90
• Is it appropriate in a democratic society that so many public appointments, of which the new press regulator Impress is the latest, require those applying to have worked at “a senior level in a public or professional capacity”? (And did they mean to exclude senior private sector experience, common in so many public appointment ads?) Impress will not be a big organisation and might benefit from not being dominated by another set of establishment suits. Recruiting from the senior and successful also discriminates against women and ethnic minorities. Open application and fair assessment of all candidates are surely the least we should expect from this and many other public bodies.
Peter West
London
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