Further to my previous post, and leaving aside the Max factor, there's a serious point to be made about Deborah Arnott's position on the board of Impress, a state-approved press regulator.
It’s exactly two years since I first wrote about Impress. I highlighted two articles, one by Mick Hume, former editor of Spiked (A new free-speech outfit – for less press freedom), the other by the late Peter Preston, former editor of the Guardian (Newspaper regulator Impress is repressive, dangerous - and daft).
As you can tell from the headlines, they both expressed serious concerns about the new body.
Last year the News Media Association, which describes itself as "the voice of national, regional and local news media organisations in the UK", published a dossier about Impress.
According to the Sun (a member of the NMA), it revealed what some committee members and staff at Impress "really think about the very papers they will be expected to make unbiased judgements on".
Those singled out by the paper were Jonathan Heawood, founder and chief executive of Impress; Máire Messenger Davies, who is both a member of the board and chair of its Code Committee; Martin Hickman and Emma Jones who are on the board and members of the Code Committee; and Gavin Phillipson, Paul Wragg and Mary Fitzgerald who are also members of the Code Committee.
The list of comments, tweets and retweets is too long to list (you can read it here) but they suggest a general abhorrence of the Sun, Daily Mail and other centre right newspapers plus (in some cases) support for an advertising boycott of the Mail.
Like the Sun, I don't think it's unreasonable to question the suitability of people with such views to sit in judgement on those very same newspapers.
Until yesterday one member of the Impress board who had gone largely under the radar was the CEO of ASH. I'm not sure why.
ASH receives annual grants of taxpayers' money and enjoys a close relationship with government. Am I alone in thinking that it's inappropriate for the chief executive of a partisan lobby group to be a member of a board that could influence the relationship between politicians and the press?
Another issue is Arnott's support for Article 5.3 of the World Health Organisation's Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) that seeks to restrict if not prohibit interaction between governments and the tobacco industry.
It may be a leap but it concerns me that an advocate of this and other restrictive practices is now involved in press regulation.
All things considered, I can’t help thinking that the two roles – CEO of ASH and member of the board of Impress - are incompatible.
If Deborah hasn't got the sense to recognise that then I would seriously question her judgement.
Meanwhile I couldn’t help noticing this comment by Impress chief executive Jeremy Heawood:
“Impress is entirely independent of the publishers we regulate and the donors who support our work.”
Let’s assume Arnott endorses that statement.
If it’s true (that Impress is independent of the donors who support their work), why can’t it be equally true that Forest is independent of the donors who support our work?
Instead, Arnott never tires of reminding the media that Forest is funded by tobacco companies, the clear inference being that - far from being independent - we are merely stooges of Big Tobacco.
The only conclusion one can draw is: there’s one rule for groups she’s involved in, and another for those she detests.
What a hypocrite.