You report (New press watchdog Ipso needs clearer rules, says chairman, 10 November) that Alan Moses believes simpler rules will make his organisation “fair and independent”. There is now a public test to determine whether any press self-regulator is fair and independent – and Moses will find that he needs to do more than simplifying a few rules to pass it.
The test is laid out in the royal charter on press self-regulation and based on criteria set out by Lord Justice Leveson after his painstaking public inquiry into press standards. Approved by every single party in parliament and overwhelmingly supported by the public, it is applied by a new body that is itself impeccably independent both of politicians and of the industry.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation satisfies only 12 of the 38 Leveson report criteria. Notably, it is not remotely independent of the industry: indeed, it is effectively owned by the big national newspaper companies. Simpler rules will not change that. As the Leveson inquiry found, those big companies do not want an independent self-regulator. That is why they designed Ipso as it is and that is why they refuse to submit it for assessment by the charter body.
Alan Moses claims to have “offered support for the victims”. Might I suggest that perhaps a good start would be for him to reply to the letter that I, along with 29 other victims of press abuse, sent to him on 8 September. We asked him how he was going to turn the organisation he has chosen to chair into the sort of effective and independent watchdog that Leveson and the public demanded.
His lack of response speaks far more loudly to us than his recent speech to the industry. Neither he nor his sham regulator, in anything like its current form, has our trust or support.
Chris Jefferies
Bristol
