These are the highlights of a rousing speech in defence of press freedom given by Jacob Rees-Mogg during last night’s Data Protection Bill debate:

“Mr Mosley was the authoriser of a leaflet… What did this leaflet say? As I say, this is so appalling that I am reluctant to read it out in Parliament. Under a heading of “Protect your health”, it said: “There is no medical check on immigration. Tuberculosis, VD and other terrible diseases like leprosy are on the increase. Coloured immigration threatens your children’s health.”

That is the view of the funder of IMPRESS. It is little wonder that our free press does not want to be associated with such a man. It is little wonder that, to its credit, the Labour party has now refused to take any further funding from this man, but IMPRESS has not. IMPRESS has not condemned this man. It has not said it will refuse further funding from the charitable trust he set up purely and specifically to keep IMPRESS running. IMPRESS has done nothing of this kind. It has a reputation of its own, and there is a certain irony in this; its chief executive is a man called Jonathan Heawood, and he tweeted, of all things, that the Daily Mail was “a neo-fascist rag”. Dare I say that he might know a good deal more about neo-fascists than one had thought when that tweet was originally circulated?”

Read Guido’s Impress File here. The Mogg’s not Impressed…

Press regulator Impress has ruled that The Canary misled its readers with its story claiming Laura Kuenssberg was “listed as a speaker at Tory conference”. The story was BS and part of the left’s sad attempts to smear Laura K as biased. A correction on The Canary’s website this afternoon admits:

In the headline of an article first published at noon on 27 September 2017 The Canary stated “We need to talk about Laura Kuenssberg. She’s listed as a speaker at the Tory Party conference”. In fact, as the remainder of the article made clear, Laura Kuenssberg had only been invited to speak at a fringe event. In misrepresenting those facts and in failing to take all reasonable steps to ensure accuracy prior to publication, The Canary breached the IMPRESS Standards Code. An updated version of the article, that was released at 16:50 on 27 September 2017, also breached the Code because it did not correct this significant inaccuracy with due prominence.

They even tried to get away without giving their correction due prominence, before Impress called them out on it. Embarrassing… 

State-backed press regulator Impress is currently investigating The Canary for spreading fake news about the BBC’s Laura Kuenssberg. Given they are endorsed by the government, surely we can trust Impress to carry out a fair and proper probe, right? Or not. It turns out two members of Impress‘ board have shared tweets from loony Corbynista accounts trolling Laura K. Press Gazette has found Impress board member Maire Davies sharing crackpot tweets calling Kuenssberg the BBC’s “chief propagandist”:

While fellow Impress board member Emma Jones tweeted out a far-left Counterfire article ranting about Laura’s supposed bias, and another cartoon with her wearing a “Vote Tory” sign.

Impress is the state-endorsed regulator backed by the government. Time and time again it has been revealed as a sham organisation made up of press-hating, party political cranks and oddballs. Total joke that the Tories haven’t done anything about this.

Readers will remember MediaGuido’s Impress File, which exposed how board members on Max Mosley’s state-endorsed press regulator were on the record saying they “hate” newspapers, want to ban them and put them out of business. Not the sort of positions a fair-minded regulator should be taking, Guido thought…

It turns out Impress agree. Press Gazette reports it has banned its own chief executive Jonathan Heawood, who Guido revealed compared newspapers to Nazis, from sitting on its decision-making committee for large publishers. It has also banned board member Emma Jones, who compared the Mail to Hitler, and Maire Messenger Davies, who equated the paper to Nazis and fascists.

The farcical situation is effectively an admission from Impress that it is not fit for purpose. How can Heawood, Jones and Davies possibly keep their positions on the board when their own organisation has deemed them unfit to regulate newspapers? Shambles…

Corbynista spin factory The Canary has joined Max Mosley’s state-backed press regulator Impress. It might seem like they were made for each other, but The Canary‘s less than reality-based offerings will surely pose the acid test for Impress’s already laughable claim at impartiality. Interesting how it’s always mad lefty sites who want to sign up to this particular regulator…

Clause 9 of the Impress Standards Code on suicide might cause an issue. It states: “When reporting on suicide or self-harm, publishers must not provide excessive details of the method used or speculate on the motives.” Wonder what they’d think of the Canary‘s now infamous piece publishing lurid details and speculation about a junior doctor’s suicide to bash Jeremy Hunt. With gross disregard for Samaritans reporting advice.

Then there is Clause 1 of the Impress Code on accuracy: “Publishers must always distinguish clearly between statements of fact, conjecture and opinion. Whilst free to be partisan, publishers must not misrepresent or distort the facts.” You can take your pick of previous Canary stories which would have breached this, for example this article still up which wrongly claims a Sun journalist impersonated a Grenfell victim. Not to mention the time they published as fact a debunked pro-Assad conspiracy theory by a discredited author. Look forward to Impress properly holding them to account…

FULL INTERVIEW: Max Mosley clashes with @afneil on press regulation #bbcsp pic.twitter.com/KSKNItHPvN

— DailySunday Politics (@daily_politics) January 15, 2017

Max Mosley gets Brillo’d as MediaGuido’s Impress File is read out to him on the Sunday Politics. Read it in full here. Mosley also confirmed the money being used to fund Impress comes from his father Oswald, refused to defend the comments made by Impress board members and admitted newspapers were unlikely to ever sign up. Hope Karen Bradley was watching as Mosley’s arguments for Impress and Section 40 were comprehensively dismantled…