A SPECTATOR 'S NOTEBOOK
IT will be a strange thing if the freedom of the Press has to be defended primarily against the National Union of Journalists, but that body's annual conference last week-end raises considerable appre- hension. First of all the Union passed a resolution calling on its members to refuse to handle articles on sport by non-journalists (why not articles on science, or religion, or for that matter politics, by non- journalists?). It then decided to instigate the Royal Commission on the Press to set up a Press Council, consisting half of representatives of proprietors and half of representatives of journalists' unions (not merely of journalists) to oversee the Press in various ways. As has been pointed out often enough, either such a body would have statutory powers, in which case the door to Government regulation of the Press would be flung wide open, or its findings would have the value of merely amiable opinions. I am glad to see that these points were driven well home by Mr. Murray Watson, President of the Institute of Journalists, in his Presidential address on Wednesday. The National Union of Journalists is an organisation in which Left- wing opinion is well entrenched, and which is working its hardest for the "closed shop" in journalism—in itself a flagrant infringement of the principle of freedom of the Press. The Institute opposes all such restraints.
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