Walter Merricks has been appointed chair of the government approved press censor, Impress. The censor has been set up along the lines envisaged in the report by Brian Leveson. Impress will operate as a rival to Ipsi, the self censor set up by
several major newspapers in preference to the state sanctioned group. Ipso follows along the lines of the defunct Press Complaints Commission. Ipso started work two months ago. Impress yields the weapon of government sanctions that newspapers have so far
tried to avoid. Merricks trained as a solicitor before becoming the first director of Camden Law Centre. He taught welfare law and freelanced as a legal journalist before joining the Law Society, which was then the solicitors' regulator, in 1985.
In 1996, he left to become an ombudsman, first in insurance and then in financial services. After recruiting the other members of its board, Impress will have to consider whether to seek recognition from the press recognition panel. The panel,
chaired by David Wolfe QC, was formally incorporated this week under a Royal charter established by the government. Impress will take account of views expressed by the publishers that it hopes to sign up before making up its mind. But Merricks
acknowledges that seeking recognition might be seen by Ipso as a hostile act. That's because recognition of a regulator will trigger provisions in section 40 of the Crime and Courts Act 2013 that will allow a court to unfairly award costs against a
publisher even if a claim against the publisher is unsuccessful. This injustice is designed as a punishment for newspapers not signing up for state censorship. Update: Meanwhile it's all a bit complicated at IPSO
10th November 2014. See article from
theguardian.com
The new press regulator's rules must be simplified if it is to fulfil promises to be fair and independent that were made by the industry after the Leveson inquiry, its chairman said on Sunday. In his first speech to the industry since the
Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) was launched in September, Sir Alan Moses suggested the rules governing the watchdog are so complicated that it was struggling to work out how to levy fines on the industry. Referring to the ability to fine
newspapers up to £1m, the chairman said: Proper successful independent regulation will not be established by manic firing of a big bazooka. And anyway we don't know how to fire it: the instruction booklet for the
use of so novel a weapon is rather too complicated for we ordinary mortals at Ipso to understand.
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