Richard Ayre is Chair of Impress. He has had a career in journalism spanning forty years, beginning in the early 1970s at the BBC in Belfast and going on to become the corporation’s controller of editorial policy and deputy chief executive of BBC News. He is a former member of the Ofcom Content Board and chair of its Broadcast Review Committee, and also chaired Article 19, the international freedom of expression charity. For fourteen years he was the Law Society’s freedom of information adjudicator before returning to the BBC as a member of the BBC Trust and chair of its editorial standards committee.