Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsThe influence of the Diploma for Journalism on the National Union of Journalists and futurejournalism training and education65) B.A. (Balliol, 1931) who went onto the Evening News in 1932, servingas a leader-writer from 1945 to 1959. Connell deplored the lack of moral orhistorical background: ’against which the daily torrent of happenings - intheir complexity and perversity - can be assessed. The lack of backgroundis really lack of knowledge.., a complement of slick knowingness, a shallowcynicism, enshrined in the phrase "What’s the racket behind the story? ’’’1z4For Connell the remedy was a higher general standard of education injournalists ’in a greater knowledge, more widely backed and more soundlybased, of what human life really is.’ Someone who had served variouspapers as correspondent in Bonn and Paris, including the Morning Postfrom 1928 to 1932, was (Sir) John Pollock (1878-1863), who graduatedfrom Cambridge in 1900, commented on how ’the five best posts on theBritish Press had been filled (during the period 1920-1932) by scholars ofKing’s, Brasenose, and New Colleges, a Fellow of Trinity and a Master atEton. ’1z5A member of the Commission, Sir George Waters, editor of TheScotsman, complained of the treatment the Report received in thenewspapers and he, personally, doubted if journalism was ’attracting theyoung adventurous minds’ which he did not necessarily equate withuniversity education. ~z6 Others feared the introduction of a ’centralisedbureau’ which would make it easier to subjugate the press to a totalitarianregime; they, of course favoured the more romantic, ’self-help’ image of thejournalist reading his way through life ~z7 while another Cambridge graduate,Wilson Harris (1883-1955) did not doubt ’the young journalist can read...but wisely-guided study is always better than random reading. ’~z8For Harris the relevant point was how all those testifying (including ’otherranks’) believed that journalists ’had to learn a great deal more than(school) examiners require’ indicating, without openly stating it, that theschools were ill-equipped for preparing future citizens well-versed in theways of government. Harris thought that picking up journalism as they wentalong (solvitur ambulando) was ’imperfect technical education.’This seems to echo the Political and Economic Planning (P.E.P.) Reporton the British Press of 1938, which included the criticism that: ’it is toofreely assumed in newspaper offices that a journalist can pick up anythingwithout special study.., whereas the truth often is that the standard ofaccuracy and judgment reached this way.., is so low as to be valueless toanyone informed about the subject in question.’In this way the Royal Commission’s report only extended the pre-warcriticisms, enabling P.E.P. to say ’there was nothing new in the Report. ’~z9The difference was that, within three years of the Commission’s Report,there was in existence a National Council for the Education and Training ofthe Junior Journalist (later N.C.T.J.) To that extent the author believes thefirst Royal Commission on the Press played an important role in pushingforward what might otherwise have struggled out over a longer period.We have seen how it took the N.C.T.J. from 1952 to 1965 to introducethe idea of one-year pre-entry courses for school-leavers. In 1965 therewas another aspect affecting journalism recruitment from universities whichwas under-recognised outside the newspaper industry: that was theagreement between the N.U.J. and the Fleet Street national newspapers,172MOD100051343