The Independent Press Standards Organisation, the newspaper industry’s own set of plans for independent self-regulation, has announced the line-up for its appointment panel.
John Witherow, editor of The Times, Paul Horrocks editor in chief of the Manchester Evening News and former president of the UK Society of Editors, Dame Denise Platt, former chair of the Commission for Social Care Inspection and Lord Brown of Eaton-under-Heywood, a former Justice of the Supreme Court, have all been named.
Lord Phillips of Worth Matravers, chairman of the ‘Foundation Group’, and Sir Hayden Phillips, chairman of the appointment panel made the announcement on Tuesday.
“The first task for me and for my colleagues on the appointment panel is to select the chair of the board of IPSO. Once appointed chair designate, he or she will join the panel to help us select the other directors of the board,” said Sir Hayden Phillips.
“When we advertise for the appointment of directors we will also seek candidates to serve on the IPSO Complaints Committee. While these latter appointments are not for the panel to make but are for the Board of IPSO itself, this process will enable the board to have available a pool of possible candidates for the Complaints Committee when the board comes into being.
“I hope that a wide range of candidates of quality and experience will come forward to serve on such an important new national institution.”
However, lobby group Hacked Off has said the appointments show “utter contempt for the very idea of independence.”
Hacked Off’s director, Professor Brian Cathcart, said: “In a process that could hardly be less transparent, they hand-picked a retired judge who, by a second and equally obscure process, has now chosen a group that includes a serving editor employed by Rupert Murdoch who has displayed an extraordinary bias against the public in his papers’ coverage of press affairs.
“Alongside him, remarkably, is a former member of the discredited Press Complaints Commission (PCC). And instead of having a substantial majority of members who are demonstrably independent of the press, it has the smallest possible majority. This is exactly the kind of shifty operating that made the PCC such a disgrace.”
It is Lord Phillips’ objective to see that the IPSO board will have been created and be ready to act by 1 May 2014.
Publishers from across the national, regional, local and periodical press met last month to sign contracts to establish the new Independent Press Standards Organisation, which is being described as an important milestone in the process of setting up the UK’s new self-regulatory system.
According to Paul Vickers, chairman of the Industry Implementation Group, the response has been “overwhelmingly positive”, with publishers representing more than 90% of the national press and the vast majority of the regional press, along with major magazine publishers, signing.
