Press Complaints Committee – not worth the paper(s) it passes judgement on?

Press Complaints Commission - under fire

Westminster’s Culture, Media and Sports Committee has recommended a whole new range of powers for the Press Complaints Commission, following an investigation into press standards and libel in the United Kingdom, during which the chairman of the committee referred to the PCC as being seen to “lack credibility and authority“.

Suggesting that the PCC should be renamed the Press Complaints and Standards Commission to better reflect its role as a regulator, it suggests that a deputy director for standards should be appointed.

Considering the current libel laws – about which science writer Simon Singh is currently petitioning the UK’s Court of Appeal, the committee does not come out in favour of a general law of privacy although there appears to be a growing campaign for this to be considered seriously by Westminster law makers.

Interestingly the committee also attack the publishers of the News of the World as ‘suffering collective amnesia’ over the extent of its recent illegal phone tapping, a practice reported widespread by the Guardian, but denied by the News of the World.

The critical report on the PCC follows recent controversy over Jan Moir’s treatment of the death of Steven Gately, referred to by gay rights group Stonewall as “dancing on the grave of a prematurely dead young man”. Following an investigation of this, the PCC concluded that the Moir article ‘just failed to cross the line’ in terms of breaching the PCC’s code of practice. Following this, Stonewall concluded that it was now “very difficult to recommend that anyone from a minority community makes a complaint to the PCC”

Recent critics of the PCC such as the Media Standards Trust have given evidence to the PCC’s review of governance  based on polls which they claim support widespread change to the way the organisation operates. According to their surveys 52% of the public would prefer an independent self-regulatory body rather than the current newspaper industry complaints body. This follows a major report in 2009 criticising the work of the PCC.

However, Sir Christopher Meyer, last year’s retiring chairman of the PCC dismissed the 2009 report at the time  as a “cuttings job masquerading as a serious inquiry” suggesting the PCC will continue to defend what some see as the indefensible but what they see as necessary and independent self-regulation.

New Attempts to Curb BBC News Delivery

iPhone - good for News

A new twist to the battle between commercial newspaper publishers and the BBC has appeared in the call by the Newspaper Publishers Association to block the BBC from extending its iPhone news applications, which provide news free on a mobile phone.

Arguing that the launch of free news and sport applications by the BBC would damage the commercial market for news application, the NPA called on the BBC Trust to stop this development pending a ‘Public Value Test’ given the ‘unique and narrow commercial space’ provided by Apple’s iPhone Apps to commercial news providers.

Claiming that the BBC was preparing to muscle into a developing market and ‘trample over the aspirations of commercial news providers’, David Newell for the NPA echoed Rupert Murdoch and argued that the corporation’s on-line presence was a key obstacle to the development of paid-for models for online content provision.

Some time ago the NPA was successful in blocking an attempt by the BBC to launch a network of local news sites, claiming that this would impinge on their own plans in this area.

Critics of the NPA would point out that the only result of this has been to block improvements to local coverage that would undoubtedly have resulted from the BBC’s move into this area.

We are still waiting for the services to appear from local commercial providers. It seems however that it will be a very long wait.

BBC news is already provided free via several applications that can be downloaded at no cost  from the iTunes store, and free news feeds are available from most BBC web sites