Independent Press Standards Organisation board members announced
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Your support makes all the difference.The co-founder of the smoothie drinks company Innocent and the former UK Ambassador to Saudi Arabia are among board members of a new press regulator set up in the wake of the phone hacking scandal.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation has been established by the newspaper and magazine industries outside of a Royal Charter on press reform passed by Parliament last year. IPSO will become active in September.
Alongside Richard Reed, co-founder of Innocent, and former British ambassador Tom Phillips, IPSO’s 12-strong board will contain senior newspaper industry figures including Charles Wilson, a former editor of The Times and The Independent, and William Newman, a former managing editor of The Sun.
The board, which is chaired by Appeal Court judge Sir Alan Moses, also includes consumer champion Ros Altmann and Dame Clare Tickell, the former chief executive of charity Action for Children.
Sir Hayden Phillips, the chair of the IPSO selection panel, said: “The new board contains distinguished people from different walks of life and with a mix of skills and achievements that will, I believe, ensure the new regulator will be able to build the trust of the public.”
Brian Cathcart, director of the press reform campaign Hacked Off, said that the regulator would not have credibility unless it applied for recognition under the Royal Charter.
“IPSO is not new, not independent and not effective. It is the Press Complaints Commission all over again,” he said. “25 years ago the big press companies were told they were drinking in the last-chance saloon. Despite phone hacking, mass theft of personal information, serial libel and relentless bullying and dishonesty from those same companies, they are still drinking. Only now the saloon is called IPSO.”
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