Sir Alan Moses made a trenchant, and often witty, defence of his role as chairman of the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) on Tuesday evening.
In a lengthy inaugural annual Ipso lecture, he underlined the strength of the regulator’s independence from its paymasters - the overwhelming majority of Britain’s newspaper and magazine publishers - while lauding the virtues of press freedom and revealing a love for newsprint newspapers.
Along the way, without specifically identifying Ipso’s critics, he made several asides in which he derided attempts to create what he called “virtual regulation”. He had, he said, “an occasional sneaking envy for those who have the happy privilege of devising a system of regulation in theory.”
Moses, speaking at King’s College London, said: “Effective regulation requires enforceable powers. Enforceable powers require a legally binding contract enforceable in court... an agreement between the regulated and the regulator.
“Press regulation requires powers to be conferred on the regulator which are enforceable in a court of law, and obligations or duties to be imposed on the regulated which are enforceable in a court of law.”
The alternative to this voluntary system, he said, was imposing regulation through legislation, by statute, in other words, by licensing. That, of course, would be inimical to press freedom.
Moses said: “Even those who argue for fiercer sanctions to persuade the press to submit to the system they advocate must recognise that any system which depends upon agreement and not compulsion does depend upon persuasion, persuading the press that it is in their own interests to agree, and not upon coercion.”
He pointed out that “the vast majority” of newspapers and magazine publishers who have signed up to Ipso were not responsible for the “public outrage” that followed the revelation of phone hacking that resulted in the Leveson inquiry:
“The excesses of illegal process, the cruel invasions and bullying pre-judgment which had prompted the inquiry were miles away from anything in which the vast majority of publications, for example the magazines and local newspapers, had participated, let alone sanctioned or condoned.
Yet they were persuaded that, even in their cases, it was in their interests to support and join a process designed to provide some protection for the public and build some authority for themselves.”
So they signed up to Ipso, contended Moses, “for no other reason than a sense of loyalty and community, rare sentiments within the highly competitive and ferocious rivalry within the world of newspapers.”
In so doing, publishers were doing “precisely” what Leveson wanted: entering into “an enforceable agreement to a system of regulation which bound them to certain obligations.”
Moses admitted that, after taking the chairman’s job, he thought it necessary to amend Ipso’s rules in order “to achieve effective regulation.” It took months of negotiation, involving “substantial persuasion” to agree “substantial changes”.
Critics regarded the changes as trivial, but this was not true, said Moses. “They reinforced our independence, placing detailed rules for the consideration of complaints entirely within Ipso’s own power, whereas before, the rules were either silent or part of the contractual terms.”
Changes to “procedural rules” mean “there is now far less room for manoeuvre to delay an investigation, or question the power to launch it in any particular case.”
A funding agreement also ensured that Ipso has “sufficient and effective financial autonomy” which “was regarded as a core feature of independence in the Leveson report.”
Moses said there had been “a dramatic improvement in the time it takes for a newspaper to deal with and resolve a complaint with a member of the public.”
And he pointed to Ipso’s “power to dictate which correction should be published, the words which should be used, where the correction should be put and how it should be presented, in which font size and with which headline.”
He said: “When we are told that our nine front page notices of correction are inadequate, it is as well to recall that never before have there been any front page corrections dictated by a regulator...ever.”
Turning to the editors’ code of practice, he said: “In my salad days, when I was green in experience of press regulation, I thought: should not the regulator be in charge of setting the standards?”
But “my experience has made me far more agnostic as to whether there should ever be anything other than the editors’ code [because] it is after all they who are responsible for what appears in the newspaper, for the content, for what they put in and equally important what they omit.”
He revealed that there will be a new round of consultations on the code at the end of this year and that no changes can occur changed without Ipso’s consent.
Meanwhile, an independent scrutiny of Ipso’s activities is being carried out by Sir Joseph Pilling, the former permanent secretary at the Northern Ireland office.
He concluded by hymning printed newspapers “with their geography, their serendipity and their smell... we need verifiable reliable sources of news and we need journalism, and that is not the same as the outpourings of flatulent trolls who feel free to disseminate whatever they like, but say nothing.”
He said, citing Kant’s dictum: “Our views of the newspapers depend upon our own views, and they are as crooked as the crooked timber of humanity from which no straight thing was ever made.”
In a Q&A session following the lecture, Moses was asked whether the fact that the Daily Mail’s editor, Paul Dacre, chaired the editors’ code committee compromised Ipso’s credibility.
He pointed out that Dacre’s role was separate from the regulator and reiterated that the code could not be changed without Ipso’s consent.
Moses also batted away other minor criticisms from a small number of questioners among a largely supportive and appreciative audience.
Full disclosure: I chaired the lecture, stepping in at the last moment because the original chair, Steve Hewlett, was indisposed. The Guardian, like the Financial Times, the Independent and the London Evening Standard, is not a member of Ipso.
