Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By richards on November 10, 2014

Sir Alan Moses speaks at the Society of Editors conference.

The new press regulators rules must be simplified if it is to fulfil promises to be fair and independent that were made by the industry after the Leveson inquiry, its chairman said on Sunday.

In his first speech to the industry since the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) was launched in September, Sir Alan Moses suggested the rules governing the watchdog are so complicated that it was struggling to work out how to levy fines on the industry.

Referring to the ability to fine newspapers up to 1m, the chairman said: Proper successful independent regulation will not be established by manic firing of a big bazooka. And anyway we dont know how to fire it: the instruction booklet for the use of so novel a weapon is rather too complicated for we ordinary mortals at Ipso to understand.

Moses told a gathering of the Society of Editors in Southampton on Sunday that the press would lose trust and authority if it failed to cooperate with the regulator. Ipso is described as part of self-regulation of the press. But the reality is that it is by an independent regulator you have agreed to be governed and bound.

Victims of press intrusion and campaign groups such as Hacked Off fear Ipso will be little different from the previous regulatory system. Ipso is backed by all the main newspapers except the Guardian, Independent and Financial Times.

Moses said: [Ipso] wants to be in a position to be clear and straightforward about how it will go about the business of ensuring compliance [with the editors code of conduct]. It needs to do so to establish its independence, its integrity and its effectiveness. It cannot be fair, it cannot reach reasonable decisions, if no one can simply, speedily and readily understand the procedural rules it is going to apply.

It cannot act as the independent regulator you have created, enmeshed in a network of interlocking rules which require an analysis that would do credit to any rabbinical study of the Talmud I am looking to remove complexity and obscurity in the rules, to make them effective, not to turn them upside-down.

Ipso is to provide modest sums to those who cannot afford to go to court to bring action against a newspaper, which has worried the financially beleaguered regional press. Moses suggested this should be piloted at a national level first.

I know the regional press is worried about that, with so few resources, but there is no reason why a trial scheme should not be put in place which excludes the regional press.

The rest is here:

New press watchdog Ipso needs clearer rules, says chairman

Category: Talmud
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