Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsHacks and Dons - Teaching at the London University Jonrnalism School 1919-1939: Its origin,development and influence.questions of professional and industrial training were discussed at theconference, organised by the British Section of the International PressInstitute in October 1980, and many of the arguments raised in thisresearch were again discussed. The author felt that the conferenceillustrated how both academics and journalists were victims of the limitedextent to which knowledge of the pre-war arguments had filtered through tothem; it was as if the author was listening to a replay of discussion startedback in 1884 when the National Association of Journalists (later theInstitute of Journalists) first raised these issues in its forums.Reading books published since the 1980s, I have noticed the somewhatslow development in serious research by academics into exactly how, andwhat, budding journalists should be taught at university level. Only asrecently as 2011 has there been any attempt to write u~ quantitative andqualitative surveying of ’Hackademics at the Chalkface. ’1 ~ Yet, as we haveseen, Dr. G.B. Harrison of King’s College spoke on the subject of ’TheUniversities and Journalism’ as long ago as 1935.147 (Appendix XXVIII) Indescribing how the college prepared for the arrival of its first Director ofPractical Journalism, Tom Clarke, in September of that year, Harrison saidthe faculty decided that ’our course should be a study of the modern worldand drew up a list of what a student might reasonably be expected to havecovered in two years.’ First, they should be able to write. Tutorial classes inEnglish Composition were included, as well as Principles of Criticism.Instead of studying the Tudor Settlement their special study would bemodern world from the French Revolution. Allied to histow were thepolitical and social theories so prevalent in the last 150 years: so theyfollowed a course on the Social and Economic Structure of Today. The lastcompulsory subject was Modern English Literature of the last fifty years,unlike the honours degree which did not extend beyond 1875.By 1995 Anthony Delano could only ’hope’ that the situation for anacademically-based journalism education would improve when journalismentered the academic discipline in numerous colleges and universities after148the 1990s. Heather Purdey indicates that over 200 journalism courseswere In ’ ex’s I t n e In ce Brltsh ’ ’i hi ’g her ducation e by 2000. 149 Indeed a recentsurvey suggests that nearly 98 per cent of all journalists have anundergraduate, or postgraduate, degree level qualification. 15°Contributors to Hugo de Burgh’s edited 2003 publication (see note 140),were still wanting to ’raise fundamental questions about what the role of thejournalists should be, and what part university should play - if any - in theireducation. These questions are very rarely asked but need to beaddressed if journalism educators are to succeed, even modestly, in theirvocation of making the media better. ’151 One contributor daringly suggeststhat ’it is necessary to start this chapter (’Who’s to make journalists?’) byestablishing whether or not journalists actually need to be educated ’15z notrealizing that the subject had been continuously aired between 1880 and1939. For this academic the main question was ’to go on to look atwhethedif that education/training should be organised and controlled byeducators or by the industry and ask whether journalism education shouldserve the interests of employers, the "public" or the students. ’1s3 Thisillustrates a tendency for academia to not fully engage with serious175MOD100051346