David Chipp: Ebullient editor of Reuters and the Press Association and resolute campaigner for freedom of information

In polls that seek to measure which members of the community least deserve our respect, journalists invariably vie with politicians for that supreme dishonour. News agency journalists, though, are a breed apart. Far from sharing the reputation for bias, irresponsibility and manipulation commonly attributed to their newspaper and broadcasting colleagues, they are seen as models of fairness, restraint and sound judgment.

David Chipp, who was found having died in his sleep in his bachelor flat in London, personified those qualities. After a professional lifetime spent with Britain's two leading agencies – Reuters for foreign news and the Press Association (PA) on the home front – he became a respected father figure for the industry, serving on numerous professional bodies. Michael Nelson, a former general manager of Reuters, described him as "one of the outstanding news agency journalists of the last century".

It was Reuters that gave him his start in journalism, hiring him as a sports reporter in 1950. Born in Kew in 1927, he soon moved to Australia with his parents and attended Geelong Grammar School at the same time as Rupert Murdoch. Their careers in the industry were to take sharply divergent paths.

In 1944 Chipp returned to Britain and joined the Middlesex Regiment, then went up to King's College, Cambridge, where he became an accomplished oarsman – an interest that he would pursue for much of his life – and graduated in history. At Reuters he spent two years on the sports desk before being given his first overseas posting to Rangoon, where he covered the turmoil in Burma, Vietnam and other parts of south-east Asia.

In 1956 he was appointed as Reuters' correspondent in Beijing – the first non-communist reporter accredited there after the revolution. His non-political approach to the assignment impressed the regime and he forged good relations with several of its senior figures. As a result, he was granted the first interview with the imprisoned last emperor, Pu Yi.

In 1960 he was called back to London, where he took a succession of senior editorial posts before becoming the agency's overall editor in 1968. Yet he had been in the job barely a year before he was lured to Reuters' Fleet Street neighbour and bedfellow, PA, as its editor-in-chief, a post he held for 17 years.

He arrived to find an institution where low morale was endemic. PA reporters were, for the most part, regarded by other newspapermen as an inferior species – and, worse, many shared that view of themselves. Although their reports were essential to the functioning of the industry, forming the greater part of the national coverage for most regional newspapers, they were largely anonymous and seldom accompanied by a byline – the reporter's adrenalin fix. In consequence, there was a constant turnover of staff as journalists sought to join national newspapers, where they might stand a chance of finding glory and glamour.

Chipp's priority was to correct this perception. Although he insisted that the agency's traditional virtues of accuracy and impartiality should be maintained, he stressed that this did not mean its stories had to be dull and lifeless. At his first editorial conference he told his staff: "Journalism should be fun. If we don't find it so we might as well be bank clerks."

He did his best to live up to his maxim. Friendly and loquacious, with a fund of tales about his far-eastern days, he was also one of the few openly gay journalists working in Fleet Street. And he could conjure a feisty manner. When the Labour MP Dennis Skinner accused PA of being biased against the Labour Government and the unions, Chipp insisted that his criticisms should be published in full on the agency wire, adding this personal note: "We have issued this drivel from Skinner because otherwise he would accuse us of censorship. His accusation is an insult to every journalist working for PA."

He was a doughty campaigner for freedom of information and for reporters' access to news sources. He would not let his staff go to official dinners unless they were treated as guests, not as below-stairs flunkies admitted only after the dessert. In 1982, he led a successful campaign to have many more reporters sent out with the British forces to the Falkland Islands than the Government had originally intended.

During his tenure he succeeded in raising the agency's profile to the point that, when the internet became an important medium for the delivery of news – although this did not happen until a few years after his retirement – it was quickly able to turn itself into a major provider.

When he left PA he was in demand to sit on boards and professional bodies in the field of journalism. He was a director of the Reuter Foundation, based in Oxford, which provides fellowships and bursaries to senior journalists from the Third World. He was also an independent director of The Observer newspaper and sat on the board of the news division of the breakfast television company TV-am.

When the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was created in 1991, replacing the Press Council as the self-regulatory body for newspapers, its chairman, Lord McGregor, invited Chipp to be one of its members from within the industry. He immediately became involved in the controversies surrounding the scurrilous – though, it transpired, largely accurate – stories being published about the decaying marriage of the Prince and Princess of Wales.

He arranged a lunch where he and McGregor discussed the looming crisis with Charles Anson, the Queen's press secretary and an old acquaintance, and the Queen's private secretary, Sir Robert Fellowes. However, they were unable to staunch the flow of damaging reports.

He sat on the PCC for two years, being forced to resign when the balance between industry and lay members swung towards the latter. But he remained active and in his last years was the press freedom and human rights adviser to the Commonwealth Press Union.

Michael Leapman

David Chipp, journalist: born Kew, London 6 June 1927; reporter, Reuters 1950-53, foreign correspondent, Reuters 1953-58, manager, Reuters 1960-68, Editor, Reuters 1968-69; Editor-in-Chief, Press Association 1969-86; died London 9 September 2008.

David had a rare gift for retaining friendships, however tenuous, writes Robin Boyle. When I was up at King's Cambridge, and a Choral Scholar in the King's Choir, David took time off from his international responsibilities at Reuters to come to King's and coach a boat I rowed in.

Several years later, when I was living in Hong Kong, I walked on to the platform of the City Hall there to conduct my own choir in a Good Friday concert, and was astonished to see my former rowing coach in the audience.

I last met him three months ago at the 150th Anniversary Dinner of the King's Boat Club, exactly 50 years after we had first met on the Cam.