Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsEditorial Attitudes Towards News Reporting Revealed in Clarke’s Lecture Notescolour. A meeting about Empire trade might not be considered by somecorrespondents as of much importance. The Daily Express representativewould not take that view of it... his report would.., be longer. ’7Robson was also concerned at how few reports were typed, pointing outthat in his student days (just after the First World War) students boughttheir own typewriters. Clarke asked him to bring this up at the JournalistCommittee because, coming from a member, it would have more authoritybehind it.Interviewing and Approaching PeopleThe third lecture of the Easter Term, 1938, was on ’Interviewing’ whichClarke said was a misnomer because what editors wanted when they sentsomeone out to ’go and get an interview’ was really ’go and get a statementfrom him.’ He demonstrated this by showing students that, in the ’Fire Test’simulation, their reports were built up after a series of interviews with thefire chief, police, survivors, shop-owner, from which they only selectedcertain statements, leaving out many things, sometimes their ownquestions. For what he called the ’armchair variety’ of interview, thenstudents would need to find out all they could about their victim, by readingreference books to learn about the background, family life, children,hobbies etc. Their line of approach could thus be planned, and nothaphazard.Approaching people for an interview was also dealt with and Clarke wasadamant they should never adopt a superior manner to the intervieweeand, if they were difficult, either point out delay would only put off themoment of reckoning or so phrase a few questions he could answer, like’Shall I be making a fool of myself if I say this’ or ’Shall I be wasting my timeif I do that.’ Even obstinate officials had a human side and buddingreporters would do well to cultivate them and find out what interested themapart from their work.Accuracy: Jargon: Reference BooksThe greatest problem for all students seemed to be maintainingaccuracy: Clarke himself commented that one year he’d been surprisedhow many people had lectured the previous week: sixteen, out of nineteen,students wrote the visiting lecturer’s name in eleven different ways, when itwas actually written and exhibited on the notice board. One had even speltthe name ’three different ways in the same report.’ So he hoped none ofthem would make jibes about newspaper inaccuracies as they had had apreliminary experience in the difficulty of being accurate. By drumming inthe need for accuracy in reporting Clarke was pointing to his dictum aboutjournalism being tied in very closely to thinking, and accurate thinking atthat.Jargon that might puzzle the beginner was the subject of another lectureon the ’Glossary of Newspaper Terms’, in which both journalistic andprinters’ terms were explained. Just as important was ’The NewspaperLibrary and the Use of Reference Books’ which began with Clarke stating124MOD100051295