The work of the Media Standards Trust, (MST) chaired by Sir David Bell who also chairs the Financial Times Group, is very necessary. No one who has read Flat Earth News and its compelling catalogue of press atrocities can doubt there is a need for such an organisation.
The Trust is groaning with media and business heavyweights - everyone from Anthony Salz, executive vice chairman of Rothchild to Simon Kelner, managing director and editor-in--chief of The Independent.
The MST has correctly identified the threat posed to standards by fewer and fewer journalists being asked to do more and more under ever-increasing time constraints.
Accuracy is an inevitable casualty when there is barely time to check - or think.
Unfortunate then that both the Financial Times and The Independent are among the news organisations now making yet journalists redundant - often the most experienced.
But the real problem with this week's MST report is its primary target - the Press Complaints Commission, the self-regulatory body for the publishing industry.
Sir David believes that the PCC is "constitutionally and structurally unable" to deal with such matters as the threats to privacy and declining standards.
Of course the PCC could be improved although any self-regulatory body represents an easy target.
But why has the MST launched an apparently gratuitous attack on the PCC just before a Parliamentary media select committee is due to begin its work.
Could it be that the MST has gone for a sensationalist approach just to get attention - one of the very charges it levels at the media?
The MST insists that it does not want to see statutory regulation of the press.
The trouble is their approach will give comfort to the head-bangers who do.
Oh and the PCC has complained that it was given no chance to comment on, or respond to the MST report before the attack was published.
Hardly best journalistic practice that.
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