Exhibit JC42 - The Leveson Inquiry

For Distribution to CPsThe importance and meaning of the London University Diploma for Journalism courseSpectator), to undertake the course on ’The General Principles of Writingfor the Press’ to second year students, and Mr. R.A. Scott-James wholectured on Principles of Criticism between 1921 and 1924. From 1925 Mr.F.J. Mansfield, of The Times sub-editorial staff, undertook second yearlectures and Mr. Hawke those for the first year students and this lasted untilthe appointment, in 1935, of Mr. Tom Clarke as Director of PracticalJournalism. From 1927 practical journalism examinations were mandatory,having been optional in 1926.One result of Mansfield’s connection with the course was the publicationof his lectures as The Complete Joumalist in 1935 (which remained in printfor over thirty years) and another on Sub-editing. It is my belief that thesetwo books had a more marked effect on the self-education necessarilyundertaken by journalists, and aspiring journalists, for as long as theyremained in print, and beyond. Far more than a mere manual the first bookillustrates Mansfield’s attitude that one had to: ’find the roots of the presentin the story of the past. Journalism has a history which cannot be avoidedby one who sets out to describe the activities of today. ’21Mansfield mentions the Diploma course (as the originator of his book) inthe preface and writes ’Many of my old students are doing good work onnewspaper staffs ’22 but he still believed that ’The provinces are the naturaltraining ground for all-round journalism. ’23Clarke’s book based on his lectures, published in 1945, devotes achapter to the subject of ’Education for Journalism’ optimistically declaringthat there seemed good reason to believe the Diploma for Journalismwould be ’revived... with a new curriculum based on lessons of the pastand the new needs of the future. ’24Somehow it seems entirely fitting that it is the Northcliffe proteg6, Clarke,and not The Times’s journalist, Mansfield, who favours education forjournalism. In essence it would appear as if the roles had been reversedbetween the New Journalist, Clarke, and the Old Journalist, Mansfield,when it comes to discussing education for journalism. Yet it is Clarke whosees the necessity for ’trained thought’ needed to produce news as storieswhich had to be told economically, vividly, and with meaning. For Clarke,popularization meant having to attract the reader’s attention, retain it andmaintain interest to the not-far-distant end of the story.It is useful here to remind ourselves just how prominent the phrase’brain-working or brain-product’ was in the early decades of the twentiethcentury. Usually attributed to Sidney Webb’s evidence to the HaldaneCommision on University Education in London (1909-13), when he said helooked forward to the university ’taking on the character of a technicalschool for all brain-working professionals (including) journalism’. Thephrase also appears in Sir Alfred Robbins’ Presidential address to theInstitute of Journalists, in 1908, when they discussed ’Educating theJournalist.’One of Webb’s former colleagues, and founder-member of the FabianSociety, Graham Wallas (1858-1932)in 1926 published The Art of Thought(London: Cape) where he discussed ’how far the knowledge accumulatedby modern psychology can be made useful for the thought-processes of aworking thinker’ and mentions journalists in his chapter ’Thought and Habit.’190MOD100051361