Last month the Press Complaints Commission made a judgement in a case involving discriminatory comments on a newspaper article. The case highlighted the issue of journalism on mental health and how it is treated by publishers alongside similar considerations such as sexuality, gender, religion and ethnicity. The complaint also led to a change in The Guardian’s moderation rules. In a
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The Press Complaints commission, which is the industry body which attempts to regulate the printed media, and now the corresponding websites, is engaged in a “Governance Review” – and is wanting responses by January 25th 2010.
The commission last had the attention of bloggers when a proposal was made by the PCC Chairman Baroness Buscombe that they should be regulated by the PCC. Unity, at Liberal Conspiracy, organised a response which drew expressions of support from perhaps 300 bloggers over the following 3 days.
Tim Ireland has been organising an excellent response , based around these five specific proposals:
SUGGESTION ONE: Like-for-like placement of retractions, corrections and apologies in print and online (as standard).
SUGGESTION TWO: Original or redirected URLs for retractions, corrections & apologies online (as standard).
SUGGESTION THREE: The current Code contains no reference to headlines, and this loophole should be closed immediately.
SUGGESTION FOUR: Sources to be credited unless they do not wish to be credited or require anonymity/protection.
SUGGESTION FIVE: A longer and more interactive consultation period for open discussion of more fundamental issues.
And he has done an excellent (and noisy) video involving space invaders, which you can see here.
The PCC has a special website set up, from where you can send your submission.
The closing date is January 25th 2010.
Following recent coverage of the PCC’s Baroness Buscombe’s Independent interview where she possibly mooted the idea of the PCC regulating blogs, I thought I would share some correspondence I had with the PCC recently over the same issue. In a nutshell: blogs can already choose to operate under the PCC anyway. I asked Simon Yip of the PCC whether a
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Baroness Buscombe, the Chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, gave a speech this week to the Society of Editors, followed by some comments to Ian Burrell of the Independent about a desire to “regulate the blogosphere“.
The Baroness has taken several steps backwards from her previous statements to Mr Burrell, and has attempted to emphasise that any proposals would be “voluntary”.
I am sceptical as to whether this is a true change of mind, or a simply more nuanced journey aiming for the same destination by a more circuitous, and perhaps better hidden, route. Ian Burrell has pointed out that he had a direct interview with her for 40 minutes, so making that mistake would not be easy/ However, that has been addressed elsewhere by perhaps hundreds of people, with an excellent and vigorous collective letter from hundreds of bloggers.
For me, in addition to the “will we … won’t we … will we … won’t we … regulate the bloggers” game of Hokey-Cokey, this affair has highlighted a number of problems with both the Press Complaints commission, and perhaps with Baroness Buscombe herself.
Was the campaign against Jan Moir that crashed the PCC website “heavily orchestrated”? Jan Moir herself thinks so. Was it “organised”? The deputy editor of the Telegraph said it was. If this was the case, who was organising this? “The big gay who runs the internet“? Stephen Fry? And what do they mean by organised? Let’s start with 3 definitions: Functioning within a formal structure,
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2 weeks ago the Scottish Sunday Express led with this cover story (PDF) on how the survivors of the Dunblane massacre were turning 18 and – shock, horror – drinking and making rude gestures. Reporter Paula Murray, it seemed, had “managed to inveigle her way into a Facebook friendship with teenagers from the town and write a salacious piece about their “antics”, based on information
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