THE CHAIRMANSHIP IN MAY 1988
In terms of the independence of the Press Council, the most significant event was the method of selecting the new chairman in May 1988. The Report makes no allusion to the selection of a chairman, but the circumstances with regard to independence, since 1966, had been of some general significance.
The chairman had always been a distinguished lawyer. On Sir Zelman’s resignation in 1988, the Council determined to seek a replacement, without any general advertisement. It did so by canvassing a number of persons familiar with the practice of self-regulation and information services, although not directly involved parties. The Newspaper Proprietors Association, under the chair of the late Sir Frank Rogers, proffered the candidature of Lord McGregor, on the grounds of his profound interest in press matters as evidenced by the report of the third Royal Commission in which was contained some strong criticism of the Press Council. While it did not contemplate the disbandment of the Council, the McGregor report of 1977 argued for reform on a number of issues, and specifically renewed the urge to compile a code of conduct for the press. For reasons which are not at first hand explicable to this writer, the Council, after interviewing Lord McGregor, declined to appoint him to succeed Sir Zelman Cowen. They evidently did not like his prescription for the future of the Press Council. It was at that point that Sir Zelman contacted me personally, to see whether I would be willing to be interviewed forThe Historical Background to Self-Regulation of the Press 293 the post. I was duly interviewed, and appointed to succeed Sir Zelman at the end of 1988. None of this episode is recorded in the Report, but the reaction to it in Fleet Street circles was profound. Its significance was the appointment itself, independent of the power of the newspaper industry, in the face of its own preferred candidate, and in circumstances where it did not hold the majority of the membership. It was an event that went to the heart of a perceived development of a Press Council that was destined to produce a greater public image within self-regulation. The newspaper industry knew publicly of a desire on my part, as there had been on the part of Sir Zelman Cowen, to advocate a statutory law of privacy.
I should add, parenthetically, that there is one reference in the report (para 5.6 and footnotes 47 and 48) to the two written statements by me,[259] which were a reference to my view on the suggestion that newspapers in the 1980s were declining to report adverse findings of complaints upheld by the Press Council, although I did say that findings were often traduced and undermined by articles in the pages of some newspapers. Otherwise my efforts at reviewing the Press Council were not noted in the Report.