From Mr D. I. M. Simpson, FRPharmS
SIR,—So, Peter Curphey believes that the editor of The Pharmaceutical
Journal should have editorial freedom (PJ, September 30, p482).
One would never have thought that, as President, he had pushed through in a
confidential session of the Council in February, 1998, a management plan that
would have downgraded the post of editor and changed the editor’s reporting
lines in a manner that would have severely compromised the freedom he professes
to espouse! Under the management plan, of which the Council had been given less
than an hour’s notice, the editor would have been made responsible to the
Secretary and Registrar for content, instead of being responsible for this to
the Council as a whole. That would effectively have made the Secretary and Registrar
editor-in-chief of The Journal.
The plan would have also made the editor subservient managerially to a non-pharmacist
publishing director. Exercising editorial freedom — which is the freedom
to decide editorial policy and content under the strategic direction of the
Council — would be difficult if not impossible from a junior position.
This would be particularly so for something as politically sensitive as The
Pharmaceutical Journal. Furthermore, the Society’s publishing director
placed before the Council in May, 1998, a confidential paper which made it clear
that he wanted to have a role in deciding the content of The Journal. Mr Curphey
cannot have read that paper, because it gives the lie to his statement in his
letter that no one on the Council or connected with the profession has ever
expressed any point of view other than that the editor should have editorial
freedom.
Fortunately, the February management plan was overturned in respect of The Journal
at the August, 1998, Council meeting, after Hemant Patel had replaced him as
President (PJ, August 15, 1998, p229).
Mr Curphey is also wrong when he says that the editor attended senior managers’
meetings not by right, but by custom and practice. The editor’s job description,
which is an important adjunct to a contract of employment, included the right,
as a head of department, to play a role within the senior management structure
of the Society.
It is also wrong for Mr Curphey to represent the editor’s role in these
meetings as simply that of a journalist. The Journal is part of the Society
and its staff are on the Society’s payroll. The Journal is a creator and
user of resources. The editor, as a senior manager, needs to have a say in how
those resources are used. This is a housekeeping role, and it is important that
The Journal has a place when decisions that could affect it, from pay policy
to the installation of new telecommunications systems, are made. It also helps
if the editor is present when senior managers are deciding how to take forward
particular strategies. The Journal has a role in explaining policies to members
and the Society as a whole can benefit from the editor’s presence. In any
case, why should the editor’s input be any less valuable than that of the
designated directors, particularly those who are not pharmacists? Surely a knowledgeable
pharmacist editor’s views would be at least as valid as those of an accountant
or a publisher when it comes to strategies for the profession. I took part in
meetings of heads of department, as the directors were then called, for many
years without difficulty or embarrassment. But, despite all this, Mr Curphey
clearly wants the settlement reached when Mr Patel was President, which confirmed
the right of the editor to attend meetings of the directors, to be torn up.
Mr Curphey, in his final paragraph, introduces pejoratively the term “disloyalty”.
He argues that the editor should retain the right to comment on the “organisation”
and the Council but not beyond the boundary of disloyalty. Surely disloyalty
to an organisation or a Council pursuing wrong policies for the profession might
mean supreme loyalty to the profession. As the late Professor Joad might have
said: it all depends on what is meant by disloyalty.
In any case, everyone, not least editors, recognises that their freedom is not
untrammelled. To suggest otherwise is highly misleading.
Douglas Simpson (former editor, The Pharmaceutical
Journal)
Beckenham,
Kent