ADDRESS BY DONALD TRELFORD TO A DINNER AT STATIONERS´ HALL, LONDON, ATTENDED BY DELEGATES OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF PRESS CLUBS AND THE EUROPEAN FEDERATION OF PRESS CLUBS, ON THURSDAY 1 JUNE, 2006.

This is a unique occasion - the largest gathering ever of press clubs from around the world, the first time the International Association of Press Clubs has ever met in London and the first time the International Association and the European Federation of Press Clubs have shared an annual meeting. The European group met here once before, in 1995, and on that occasion too the meeting was sponsored by the Corporation of London (now known as the City of London) and by the European Parliament. We are immensely grateful for the City's continuing support and welcome their presence here tonight. We are also grateful that organizations of the European Union have continued to support us, helping some of our delegates with their costs of transport and accommodation. As a result, the number of countries represented here has mounted to 23, a remarkable figure compared with the meeting only a decade ago. We have many other people to thank for helping to bring us together - notably Reuters, the Guardian and the Financial Times, the Foreign Office, the British Library and the Newspaper Publishers´ Association, which is celebrating its own centenary this year.

It is particularly fitting that we should be meeting in this lovely place, the Court Room of the Stationers´ Hall, home of the Worshipful Company of Stationers and Newspaper Makers, a company to which I am proud to say I was myself admitted many years ago. For those among you who have come from abroad, it may be worth telling you something about the Stationers.

They were originally founded in 1403 and approved by the Mayor and aldermen of the City of London as the body to regulate the book trade. It was situated in this part of London because it was close to the law courts and to Parliament, for which printers did much of their work. For this reason, too, newspapers came to be based in Fleet Street, just down Ludgate Hill, and this is how St Bride´s, currently home to the London Press Club, and where we have been holding some of our meetings, became the spiritual home of journalists.

In 1557 the Stationers were given a Royal Charter and the power to license all books or manuscripts published in the city, and retained this power until 1695. In 1666, along with much of medieval London, the hall was burnt down in the Great Fire of London, and rebuilt on the same site in 1673. This fine room dates from 1748. I hope you noted the fine stained glass windows in the main hall as you came in - if not, I urge to look at them on your way out. They depict many of the great figures in the history of British printing, including its founder, William Caxton.

Caxton´s assistant, Wilkyn de Word, actually had a press at St Bride´s. So here we are at the heart of the British printing and newspaper trade - and what could be more appropriate for such a meeting as this.

Press clubs came into being in different countries for different reasons - ours began in a hotel in Fleet Street in 1882. Sometimes they were formed primarily for social reasons, sometimes with a more professional agenda - and they have continued to develop in different directions, with various forms of funding, in the many countries represented here. That seems fine to me. Press clubs should find their own way forward, according to the kind of societies in which they operate. There need be no formal blueprint.

We are delighted that delegates from the new democracies of Eastern Europe, and from the former Soviet Union, have been able to attend this conference and we wish them every success in establishing press clubs of their own.

Some press clubs will be closer to governments than others. Some will be closer to business than others.

In London we like to stay close to both and to provide a forum that enables people in politics or business to meet with journalists in an atmosphere conducive to a good working relationship. We also encourage the press officers of foreign embassies to join the club. We insist, however, that we remain non-political in a party sense. For that reason we have entertained both the Prime Minister Tony Blair and, only a couple of weeks ago, the Opposition leader David Cameron as guest of honour at our annual awards lunch.

The London Press Club, as some of you will know, was reborn nearly 20 years ago through the tireless efforts of individuals who clung to the idea through many crises. Some of them are here tonight - George Westropp and Dennis Griffiths, for example, former chairmen of the club and still actively involved.

The club has now grown to over 600 members and established links with a number of other media-related organizations such as the Foreign Correspondents´ Association, the Media Society, Women in Journalism and the Association of Travel Writers. Our two major events are the Awards Lunch and the Press Ball, in aid of the Journalists´ Charity, which we successfully revived last year. But we also meet at least once a month for either a social occasion or for debates on issues of media policy.

St Bride´s is on the brink of a major building redevelopment in which we hope to find a more permanent home, with more extensive facilities, including facilities for journalists visiting London from other countries.

I said earlier that press clubs should be allowed to develop in their own ways in their own countries, according to the wishes and needs of their own members. At the same time, I think it is important to remember also that we have some common ideals. Above all, we believe in freedom of speech and freedom of expression. We believe in the promotion of professional standards, such as integrity, accuracy and honesty. We believe press clubs can encourage and develop these standards, especially in countries for whom the concept of democracy is fairly new.

For that reason we have today signed what is known as the London Declaration, in which all our member clubs commit themselves to these ideals and to widening the family of press clubs around the world.

The nature of the media is, of course, changing fast, with new electronic methods of transmitting information challenging the pre-eminence of newspapers as the way in which people acquire their news. This is true and newspapers must adapt to these changes. But I think it would be premature to write newspapers off. We should remember that they have already survived the massive discoveries in technology in the last century - the arrival of radio and television, global aviation, satellite telephones, video and DVD. Each one of these developments presented itself as a threat to the future of newspapers, yet they not only survived but prospered.

It may be that some of the peripheral services a newspaper provides, such as how to find a house, a restaurant or a job, can be done better on the Internet. But the need for real journalism will be needed as much as ever, if not more, in an increasingly complex world. How does one define "real journalism"? I would highlight three essential qualities - revelation (finding things out through original investigations), context (explaining the meaning of events) and opinion (helping people to make up their minds on the great issues of the day.
Revelation, context, opinion - those are the essential qualities of the kind of journalism that will continue to survive because it meets the real needs of the public.

Some people might say: does it really matter if newspapers survive or not? After all, what are they but a transient commodity with the lifespan of a pack of cigarettes? The answer is Yes, it does matter because the press matters. No matter what is wrong with a society, if the press is free the facts cannot be concealed for ever. While that is true, everything else is somehow correctable. That is why press freedom, a branch of freedom of speech, is the key to all other freedoms.

Good newspapers do not exist just to make profits, but to serve a moral and social purpose. The press has no real value unless it serves the public good. That service may consist of pointing out lies or waste by governments or fraud on consumers by greedy companies. But it doesn´t have to be confrontational. It may mean simply providing information in positive ways that people can understand. It is the role of the press, above all, to ensure that public debate is properly informed.

A key task for the next generation is to recover the trust of the public, for journalists - in Britain, at least - are members of the country´s least trusted profession. About 90 per cent of people trust a doctor to tell the truth; less than a fifth trust the press to do the same.

Computers can provide raw facts, more speedily than newspapers can. But they are not equipped to explain the meaning of those facts. The really significant changes in our world are not on the surface anyway. It is the job of newspapers, if they are to have a serious future, to chart the hidden currents beneath everyday life.
The economist, John Maynard Keynes, put the challenge like this:- "The events of the coming year will not be shaped by the deliberate acts of statesmen, but by the hidden currents flowing continually below the surface of political history, of which no one can predict the outcome. In one way only can we influence those hidden currents - by setting in motion those forces of instruction and imagination which change opinion. The assertion of truth, the unveiling of illusion, the dissipation of hate, the enlargement and instruction of men´s hearts and minds, must be the means."

That is a tall order for newspapers, which are mainly concerned with the rapid recording of current events before they pass into oblivion. But it expresses, in an ideal form, what newspapers should aspire to achieve if they are to survive the challenge of the Internet.

Having spent the best part of half a century in newspapers, I remain an optimist about their future - even allowing for the fact that an optimist was once described as the only man in the room who hadn´t heard the bad news. I sincerely hope that our foreign guests, many of whom have serious battles to face in their own countries, can take away some of that optimism from our meetings and that the association of press clubs can help them in the battles they face.

I end with a quotation from a play by Tom Stoppard, which sums up for me why newspapers really do matter.
A photographer says: "I´ve been around a lot of places. People do awful things to each other. But it´s worse where everybody is kept in the dark. It really is. Information is light. Information, in itself, about anything, is light. That´s all there is to say really."

And of course he´s right. That´s all there is to say, really.