A Spectator's Notebook THE COUNCIL'S Fifth Annual Report fairly flings
around the whitewash. But what else can be expected of a body which can say, when discussing the individual's right of privacy, 'Those who resent polite inquiries have often something to hide'? The fact is, nobody inside or outside the profession takes the Council seriously. It suits some newspapers to pretend to take it seriously----at any rate until it reprimands them—but that is not the same thing. Still, the complacency displayed by the Council must be a matter of concern to journalists and others watching the steady degradation of some sections of the press. 'It is becoming inconceiv- able,' says the report, 'that any editor or news editor would choose to bring himself and his paper into odium by encouraging outrageous methods of news collection.' But while the Report was printing we had the case of the Daily Sketch rigging an entire story, with the aid of a former Confidential stringer whom it had itself exposed in the past, in order to be able to boast about
a 'scoop' later; and when the stunt ended with the deaths of the participants in an air-crash, it was followed by a stomach-turning leading article by the editor. The Council has no powers to do anything but exhort such editors, and journalists who despise it, to mend their ways; and it does not want them—indeed,,it would reject them if offered, just as it rejects the proposal that it should have lay members, who might bring a non- cartel breath of good sense into its discussions.
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