Letters | 13 August 2011

Press complaint

Sir: Charles Moore’s comments on the PCC last week (The Spectator’s Notes, 6 August) contained several significant inaccuracies. Lord Wakeham didn’t leave the chairmanship of the commission as a result of criticisms from the Telegraph that he wasn’t handling complaints impartially. He stood down, as a matter of honour, after he was tangentially implicated in the Enron debacle. Fleet Street does not pay the lion’s share of the chairman’s salary which, in fact, comes out of funding provided by the national, local and provincial newspapers and the magazines industry on a proportionate basis.

The appointment of Wakeham’s successor Sir Christopher Meyer was not arranged by News International and Associated Newspapers. Sir Christopher, who had the backing of all the newspaper industry’s trade bodies, was chosen as the strongest candidate from a shortlist candidates by an independent appointments commission.
Sir Christopher did not soon afterwards become a major contributor to the Daily Mail. In fact, he wrote occasional articles on diplomatic subjects some considerable time after he stood down as the commission’s chairman. His book on the Iraq war was bought by the Daily Mail in partnership with the Guardian (a paper that has been deeply critical of the PCC) in an open auction in which there were under-bidders.

There was, however, one other important fact about the PCC which Mr Moore forgot to mention. The first clause of its code of practice says: ‘The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information.’ We can only hope that his book on Margaret Thatcher is more accurate than his observations on press self-regulation.

Charles Garside
Managing Editor, The Daily Mail,
London W8

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