Andrew Neil interviews Max Mosley on Press Regulation

I have now had a chance to watch the interview of Max Mosley by Andrew Neil which was broadcast this morning on the Sunday Politics show, and have posted it below.

The word "fascist" is one of the most over-used insults in British politics, but one of several extraordinary things which comes out of this interview is that the family trust which is largely funding IMPRESS, the state-approved press regulator, was previously run by a real one - Max Mosley's father was the founder and leader of the British Union of Fascists.

But the killer question Andrew Neil put and to which Mosley had no answer, some 12 minutes into this clip was

"What would happen to the boss of OFCOM,  for example, which regulates broadcasters, if it described Channel 4 News as 'Marxist Scum'?"

The trouble is that too many senior members of the IMPRESS board and code committee have said things like that about the newspapers for the body to have enough credibility to be fit for purpose as an impartial regulator.

See what  you think ...


Comments

Anonymous said…
Mosley said the press were free to start their own Leveson-compliant regulator if they didn't like Impress. That's a complete answer in my book and one to which Neil had no come back.
10:55 pm
Chris Whiteside said…
You may regard that as a complete answer but I certainly do not regard it as a good answer.

For one thing, being "Leveson compliant" within the terms of Section 40 means being approved by a government panel and a lot of the press regard that as a serious problem.

For another, if you want to put pressure on the press to meet the other requirements of Leveson, including those which I support such as providing an accessible means of low-cost arbitration, a law which penalises good journalism as well as bad journalism is not the right way to go about it.
12:20 pm
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