Roy Greenslade: Barking up the wrong tree with new press watchdog Ipso?

Hacked Off, fronted by Hugh Grant, should be pleased with Sir Alan Moses (Photo: Getty)

Getty

10 September 2014

Critics of the new newspaper regulator, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso), have attacked it on the grounds that it is little more than a reformed imitation of its discredited predecessor, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

Hacked Off, the body that represents former victims of press misbehaviour, has been particularly hostile to Ipso, arguing that it was created by a group of newspaper and magazine publishers in order to avoid full compliance with the Leveson inquiry recommendations.*

There is a belief that Ipso will let newspapers do as they like, benefiting from light-touch regulation in a system they designed for that very purpose.

The situation could not be more different. The critics have rushed to judgment because the regulator, which began life on Monday, is more likely to be regarded by its publishing architects as too strong rather than too weak.

Ipso’s figurehead, former Appeal Court judge Sir Alan Moses, appears from his public and private statements to be on a collision course with his employers.

In an initial briefing to journalists, he spoke of Ipso’s “mind-numbing rules and regulations”, claiming they were “incomprehensible” in some places and required “Talmudic analysis”. Those were rules composed by publishers.

He is also known to regard the funding of the body as inadequate to achieve the kind of regulation he thinks necessary, such as the mounting of investigations.

Increases to the budget are unpopular with several cash-strapped companies. Some of Ipso’s paymasters are also nervous about his desire to pilot a form of arbitration as soon as possible.

Hacked Off should be pleased with Moses. In asserting his independence, he gives every appearance of being closer to their position than that of the publishers.

Consider his record. He enjoyed a distinguished judicial career but it was marked by his refusal to play the establishment game.

He was known for his maverick streak, which legal observers believe halted his deserved progress to the summit of the judiciary, a place on the Supreme Court.

He is unlikely to compromise on his principles in order to accommodate the wishes of newspaper editors who would dearly like to return to pre-Leveson days.

The likelihood of a judge-led regulator clashing with publishers reminds me of what happened in the days of the PCC’s own predecessor, the Press Council. Most of its chairmen were drawn from the judiciary, and editors railed against their legalistic approach to holding them to account.

The editors openly defied the Press Council by publishing attacks on its decisions, which brought the regulator into disrepute.

The conflict between the two sides was one of the key reasons the PCC was set up as a politic way to take the heat out of an increasingly fractious situation.

Moses could well end up like the last Press Council chairman, Sir Louis Blom-Cooper, who found it impossible to tame newspaper misbehaviour without the full-hearted backing of publishers and editors.

It is hard to see Moses as naïve, but he is surely ill-informed about the power that newspapers exercise while crying freedom of the press. He, and even Ipso, may have a short existence.

*The Evening Standard and The Independent, in company with The Guardian and Financial Times, have not joined Ipso.

Roy Greenslade is Professor of Journalism, City University London, and writes a blog for the Guardian

Roy Greenslade: Barking up the wrong tree with new press watchdog Ipso?

Read More