It isn’t an amazing surprise that the director and two board members of Impress aren’t huge fans of the Mail and Sun, tweeting and re-tweeting a shower of abuse last year. But even regulators are human, so one might – at a stretch – forgive the officially sanctified press watchdog if contrition and lessons learned were to follow.
What I can’t quite forgive, though, is the way – six months late – in which the Impress website reported the internal investigation into this folly.
“Impress is growing fast, with publishers reaching 4.5 million monthly readers”, trumpets the relevant press release. You have to plough down to the very end and click before you discover the imposition of a new code of conduct plus “detailed findings and recommendations” and assorted recusings. Score one for stupidity at the top, but score nothing at all for transparency: a total own goal. Wholly unimpressive.
• Jeremy Corbyn pronounces Paul Dacre old news. “The day before the election, one paper devoted 14 pages to attacking the Labour party. And our vote went up nearly 10%… So this is a message to the Daily Mail’s editor: next time, please could you make it 28 pages?”
Tom Watson, the scourge of Rupert, claims final victory. “Nine months ago at the election Murdoch’s papers did their best to start a Tory landslide. They threw the kitchen sink at Jeremy but this time it wasn’t the Sun what won it and let me tell you conference, it will never again be the Sun what won it.”
So much for the malignant Mail and battered Bun. So much for the yesterday’s spectres of press power. Now, can we all move on?
