A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
NO doubt the Observer is right in saying that the Royal Press Commission is toying with the idea of setting up a Press coun- cil to establish some sort of Press standards. That, indeed, might have been said any time in the last three months. One reason is that the Commission must recommend something and has nothing much else to recommend. Another is that some members of the Commission at any rate are anxious to respond to the desires of the National Union of Journalists, which had a great deal to do with the whole project of a Royal Commission. A Press Council, if it were set up, would have to provide its own justification. Any idea of making it a statutory body would involve Government action which, in the case of the Press, would be strongly opposed. If on the other hand it were a purely voluntary body, established pre- sumably by such sections of the journalistic profession as desired such a body (by no means all do), it would have no very impressive status, and its findings would carry only such weight as public opinion might choose to attach to them. That, of course, does not exclude the possibility that they might in the end command con- siderable weight.
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