Tag Archives: baroness buscombe

Opinion: The PCC are to blame for the Ryan Giggs fiasco

At Conference last September, I proposed a motion that called for new rules to beef up the PCC, making it more independent of newspaper editors and giving it real powers to regulate the wilder elements of the press. The motion called on Lib Dem ministers to act now in the face of a growing number of legal injunctions that were being fuelled by lack of confidence in the regulator. In the long run lack of action would stand to restrict press freedom, I argued, because it would give weight to calls for an illiberal privacy law whereby politicians could …

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Press Complaints Commission toughens up correction rules for websites

As I’ve commented on before (such as here), there has often been a problem with the Press Complaints Commission upholding a complaint about a story but the news outlet’s website not being fully updated to reflect this. For example, the complained about story might continue to appear on a newspaper website without any indication in the story that it was subsequently the cause of a ruling against the newspaper.

Now however the Press Complaints Commission has issued new rules:

When a complaint is upheld by the PCC, the editor is obliged to publish it with “due prominence”. Here is some

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New twist over News of the World phone hacking allegations

In an unusual and dramatic turn in the long-running story of the News of the World (editor at the time, Andy Coulson) and the hacking in to the voicemail systems of people in the public eye, a lawyer whose claims were initially dismissed as wrong by the Press Complaints Commission is now sueing for libel.

As The Guardian explains:

Peta Buscombe, the baroness who chairs the Press Complaints Commission, has been sued for libel by a solicitor.

Writs have also been issued against the PCC itself and the Metropolitan Police by a London-based solicitor, Mark Lewis.

He is claiming damages for libel, including

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Winterval: the Christian media has more questions to answer than local councils

It’s become a seasonal cliché of British journalism. In the run-up to Christmas there is a flurry of stories about political correctness gone mad as the word Christmas is left to one side by local councils in particular as festive lights get switched on, celebrations run and greetings cards sent out. Following hard on the heels of the flurry of stories is a series of much less noticed debunking of many of them. But why let the facts get in the way of the annual season of such stories?

This year, in fairness to the media (and perhaps partly a reflection of the …

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What should be done with the PCC?

That’s the question asked in today’s Media Guardian, following the controversies associated with the Press Complaints Commission in the last month.

First, there was the PCC’s ruling that the Daily Mail didn’t owe Iain Dale an apology for branding him ‘overtly gay’. Then there were the record-breaking 22,000 complaints submitted to the PCC following the Daily Mail’s publication of a snide piece by Jan Moir attacking Boyzone singer Stephen Gately’s lifestyle and implying it contributed to his death.

And then the PCC’s new Chair, Baroness Buscombe, delivered a lacklustre and confused address to the Society of Editors, before setting any number of hares running by suggesting the PCC might have a role in regulating blogging.

Finally, the Guardian’s editor Alan Rushbridger quit the PCC’s oddly named Code Committee after the regulator’s pusillanimous response into allegations of illegal phone hacking by a number of tabloid newspapers.

All in all, a busy month for the PCC.

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  • Mohammed Amin
    I have just read the full story on PoliticsHome. It is sobering to be reminded how quickly things can change. I congratulate Anna Sabine on being open about ...
  • David Vigar
    Good thinking. And close to the fundamental beliefs of Paddy Ashdown, with whom I worked in the 1990s. His thinking was that if every citizen could fulfil their...
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  • Chloe
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