Three newspaper publishers have denied a claim by Baroness Buscombe (pictured) that they threatened to quit the organisation because of negative adjudication recently.

Responding to Robert Jay QC at the Leveson inquiry today, who said: “I think a number of editors threatened to leave the PCC”, Buscombe replied: “Yes, the FT, the Guardian, the Mirror.”

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger tweeted:

Buscombe says Guardian theatened to leave PCC because of critical adjudication. Not true #Leveson

— alan rusbridger (@arusbridger) February 7, 2012

The Mirror said:

Mirror statement: “The Mirror has not threatened to leave the PCC in recent years.” #leveson

— Henry Clarke Price (@HenryCP) February 7, 2012

The Financial Times added:

“The FT has never complained to the PCC about adverse adjudications nor threatened to quit the PCC because of rulings against the newspaper”

— Ben Fenton (@benfenton) February 7, 2012

The PCC said: “Baroness Buscombe was giving a personal recollection of her conversations and experiences whilst at the PCC, during her evidence at the Leveson Inquiry this morning. The PCC has not received any formal proposals from these publishers to withdraw from the system in recent years.”

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The debate around the need for reform of the UK’s self-regulation of the press returned to the spotlight this week, as industry representatives joined to discuss the issue at the Society of Editors conference on Monday and Tuesday. Following the event we spoke to a number of leading journalism figures, to hear their views and find out where the industry may go from here.

In this week’s #jpod news editor Rachel McAthy speaks to editor of the Independent Chris Blackhurst, group managing director of Northcliffe Media Steve Auckland, director of the Press Complaints Commission Stephen Abell and director of the Media Standards Trust Martin Moore.

You can hear future podcasts by signing up to the Journalism.co.uk iTunes podcast feed.

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Baroness Buscombe, outgoing chair of the Press Complaints Commission, singled out the Guardian during a talk at City University last night, accusing the paper of misquoting her “non-stop” for three years.

Responding to a question from Guardian data journalist James Ball about her comments on enforced regulation compliance, Buscombe demanded to know what he was going to tweet and repeatedly said “Have you got that Guardian?”

See a full report from media law blogger Judith Townend on Meeja Law at this link.

And a report from Jon Slattery here.

• Will inquiries find PCC a chocolate teapot, or a serious ‘mediator’?
• Financial Times: PCC chief demands meetings with national newspaper publishers
• PCC defends phone hacking report: ‘We can’t do things that the police can do’
• Press Complaints Commission to join Twitter; wants to explore social network debate
• Independent: PCC would act on ‘a whiff’ of new phone hacking

Revelations about the extent of the phone-hacking scandal have fuelled discussion about the state of self-regulation and possible reform. Martin Moore, director of the Media Standards Trust, has created a thought-provoking list of seven possible ways in which the system might be reformed, from scrapping regulation altogether to full statutory regulation. Moore has weighed up some of the pros and cons of each idea and intends for them to serve as a framework for discussion of the issue.

The list:

1. Abolish the PCC, without setting up a replacement
2. Reform the existing PCC
3. Create an independent regulator
4. Extend a watered down Ofcom to cover all major media organisations
5. Create a professional body for journalists
6. Withdraw all media regulation, but reform, extend, reduce and clarify existing media law
7. Create a new statutory regulator for all media

See Moore’s post on the MST website for his introduction and the full reasoning behind each idea.

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The Press Complaints Commission has responded to an article published yesterday which claimed that the body was just a mediator and not a regulator. The piece, by Brunel University’s professor of screen media and journalism Julian Petley and published on the New Left Project site, calls the PCC “merely a body which deals with complaints about the press, the equivalent of the customer services department of any large corporate organisation”.

As the PCC misses no opportunity to remind us, it regards what it calls self regulation as preferable to any other kind of regulation, especially statutory regulation. As the Commission is financed by the very publications which it is supposed to be regulating, this is hardly surprising. However, the PCC cannot with justification present itself as a regulator given that (a) it was not established as a regulator and consequently (b) nothing in its Articles of Association suggest that it is meant to perform a regulatory function.

Read Petley’s full article at this link.

PCC director of communications Jonathan Collett responded to the piece today, rejecting the idea that the body is merely a mediator and not a regulator. Collett calls the New Left Project article a “lively read” but claims it is “undermined by being based on several false premises”.

Julian Petley is obviously wrong to try to characterise the PCC as merely a mediator and not a regulator. He is wrong to suggest there is nothing in the PCC’s Articles of Association to suggest it performs a regulatory function when those articles actually specifically state that the PCC has responsibility to: “consider and pronounce on issues relating to the Code of Practice which the Commission, in its absolute discretion considers to be in the public interest”.

Read Collett’s full response at this link.

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The Financial Times reports this morning that the chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Lady Buscombe, has demanded individual meetings with every publisher of national newspapers in the UK, including the Financial Times itself.

The face-to-face meetings are in an attempt to seek reassurance “that ethical scandals which have afflicted the industry will not be repeated”, according to the FT.

In an interview to coincide with publication of the PCC’s annual review, Lady Buscombe told the FT that “trust in the system was of paramount importance” after it had been undermined by scandals involving phone-hacking and other illegal journalistic methods. Trust was “one of the most important principles” of self-regulation, she said, adding: “If we are going to have trust in the system, I need [the publishers'] assurance that, whether it’s phone-hacking or any activities like that, it will never happen again.”

See the full FT report here… (may require registration)

• MediaGuardian: Alan Rusbridger resigns from PCC code committee
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• PCC defends phone hacking report: ‘We can’t do things that the police can do’

Guardian editor-in-chief Alan Rusbridger, who has been and remains a vocal critic of the Press Complaints Commission, argued last night that the regulatory body should be supported and improved, not scrapped, and said the press will need to pay more to if it wants an effective regulator.

Delivering the Anthony Sampson lecture at City University London, Rusbridger, who resigned from the PCC code committee in November 2009, did not let up in his customary criticism of the body, calling it “ineffective” and its 2009 report into phone-hacking at the News of the World “utterly feeble”.

“How, MPs reasonably ask, can we as an industry argue that self-regulation works when it evidently failed quite spectacularly over phone hacking?”, he asked.

In March last year, speaking at a debate on self-regulation in the House of Lords, Rusbridger suggested the PCC might be “flying the wrong flag [and might be] better to rebrand itself as a media complaints and conciliation service and forget about regulation”.

But he argued last night that self-regulation remains preferable to statutory regulation, and called for the PCC to take a tougher stance on issues such as phone hacking.

He asked why it hadn’t written directly to News International over Glenn Mulcaire, the private investigator at the heart of the phone-hacking scandal, to ask “why are you paying fees of someone likely to be involved in illegal activity?”.

The PCC, he said, needed to “do something which showed a vertabrae”.

I can’t imagine a fine than would scare News International, they’re just so big and rich. What scares them is the truth, they’re are scared of the truth coming out.

I put it to Rusbridger after the lecture that one of the things required to strengthen the regulator and allow it to undertake proper investigations would be better funding, and asked if, alongside his criticism of the body and calls for it to be improved, the Guardian should lead the way in making a greater financial contribution.

It’s difficult, it’s not lavishly funded and it’s clearly not set up to do something like a big investigation into phone hacking. I think if we want the kind of PCC that’s going to be effective we are all going to have to pay more. But that’s a pretty tough message if you work on the Yorkshire Post or the East Anglian Daily Times. Why should you pay more when by and large you’re not doing things that are going to require fantastically expensive investigation?

He acknowledged that the PCC did not have the funds to undertake thorough investigations, investigations “with teeth”, and said the press would have “to be a bit more creative about the way that we fund the PCC”.

It can’t just stagger on as it is, being completely ineffective because they shrug they’re shoulders and say ‘we haven’t got the power and we haven’t got the money’.

See Rusbridger’s full lecture at this link.

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• Comment is Free: Phone hacking – select committee must move quickly, says Paul Farrelly
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Guardian media and technology editor Dan Sabbagh reports this afternoon that reporters’ and newspapers’ Twitter feeds are expected to brought under the regulation of the Press Complaints Commission later this year.

According to Sabbagh’s report, Twitter accounts that include the names of publications and are clearly “official” – he cites @telegraphnews and @thesun_bizarre as examples – are likely to come under regulation, but reporters’ individual work accounts could also be brought under the commissions’ ambit.

The PCC believes that some postings on Twitter are, in effect part of a “newspaper’s editorial product”, writings that its code of practice would otherwise cover if the same text appeared in print or on a newspaper website.

A change in the code would circumvent a loophole that – in theory – means that there is no form of redress via the PCC if somebody wanted to complain about an alleged inaccuracy in a statement that was tweeted. Last year the PCC found it was unable to rule in a complaint made against tweets published by the Brighton Argus.

Full post on MediaGuardian at this link.

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The chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, Baroness Peta Buscombe, has said there are “serious questions which need answers” by News International after “their own internal inquiries were not robust”.

In a letter to a lawyer who successfully sued her for libel in relation to the phone-hacking investigation, the chairman condemns all those at the News of the World who have been involved in hacking.

The chairman yesterday wrote to Mark Lewis, a lawyer for some of the celebrities and public figures who believe they are victims of hacking, stating that the committee set up by the PCC to review phone hacking is robust.

Giving evidence to the Culture, Media and Sport committee last year, Lewis said he was told by DS Mark Maberly, a Metropolitan police officer, that 6,000 people may have had their phones hacked by the News of the World.

Buscombe later said in a speech at the Society of Editors conference that Lewis had misquoted Maberly, prompting the libel claim which saw the chairman publicly apologise in the High Court and pay damages to Lewis.

Lewis, of  Taylor Hampton Solicitors, wrote to Baroness Buscombe earlier this week and she has now responded.

“Let me be clear about my position on phone hacking, which has been consistent throughout.

“It is a deplorable practice, and an unjustifiable intrusion into an individual’s privacy,” she said in the letter.

“The commission has always said that it is a breach of the Editors’ Code.

“As I said to the Independent in February this year, it brings shame upon the whole journalistic profession. I condemn all those at the News of the World who have been involved in it.”

• Solicitor Mark Lewis considering legal action against PCC
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The Press Complaints Commission is best placed to regulate the press in relation to privacy and online media, chairman Baroness Buscombe said today.

Speaking at the Westminster Media Forum Buscombe said:

Regulating online content is challenging. Let me pose the difficult question: what does privacy mean in an online world? There is an argument – with which Mark Zuckerberg might agree – that it means hardly anything at all these days. People have adopted a public persona online; they have developed a culture of information exchange such that privacy will lapse as a “social norm”.

Perhaps. But that doesn’t quite ring true to me.

An opposing argument would be that the online world gives people the chance actually better to define what they wish to be private: via privacy settings on Facebook, say, they can make clear to the world what information is for public consumption, and what they wish to restrict to a smaller audience.

In truth, there will be no clear answer. People will use social media in different ways, and with clear differences in their level of understanding of the implications of their actions.

What is clear is that journalists – both print and broadcast – now have the outpourings of non-journalists as a resource of information. And it is important that there are ethical guidelines about how to use that information. We believe at the PCC that we are able to provide them. We believe that a voluntary Code, reinforced by practical guidance from case law, is a model for maintaining standards in this area.

The PCC chairman cited examples of photographs and information taken from Facebook and Twitter and used in the press, reminding the audience of the PCC’s five key tests when it comes to using material gained via social media.

• First, what is the quality of the information? How private is it in itself?
• Second, what is the context of the information? Material that has been uploaded as a joke between friends, for example, may not be suitable for journalistic use in a story about a tragedy.
• Who uploaded the material, or consented for it to be uploaded?
• How widely available is the material online; or, to put it another way, what privacy restrictions were placed on it?
• And finally what is the public interest in publication?

The full speech is available at this link…

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Following news that Richard Desmond’s publisher Northern & Shell had withdrawn all of its titles – including the Daily Mirror and OK! Magazine – from the PCC’s self regulatory system, the Media Standards Trust has posed the following open questions to Northern & Shell, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and the Press Board of Finance (PressBof). Republished here in full.

Northern & Shell

• Will you guarantee to offer the same levels of protection to members of the public – such as families who have suffered a suicide – as you did when covered by the PCC code?
• If a member of the public feels harassed by a journalist claiming to work for Northern & Shell, what should they do?
• If you discover that a high profile public figure is pregnant before their 12 week scan, will you protect their privacy as other newspapers have agreed, or just publish the story?
• Will your publications continue to write to the PCC Editorial Code, or is Northern & Shell opting out of all existing codes of self-regulation?
• How should a reader go about making a complaint about something that is written in one of your titles?
• When the Media Standards Trust wanted to make a complaint to the Daily Star, it found that the newspaper did not make public the name of its editor or a phone number for anything other than the newsdesk. Will the affected titles now make clear how to contact the editor and/or provide a clear internal complaints system?
• What motivated your withdrawal and on what terms, if any, would you return to the system overseen by the PCC?

Press Complaints Commission

• What impact will Northern & Shell’s withdrawal have on the PCC’s overall funding? Given that the amount contributed by national newspapers is kept secret, it is currently not possible for those outside the industry to work out what effect the exit will have.
• Will the PCC be able to maintain the same level of service on a lower budget?
• In its statement – and for the first time – the PCC revealed some of the publications not covered by the PCC (i.e. Northern & Shell publications). Will the PCC now publish a list of all those that do subscribe?
• Was Northern & Shell clear as to what motivated its withdrawal? And, if so, is it clear under what terms it might return to the system?

PressBof

• This is the second time in two months that the PCC budget has been hit (the first being the libel settlement and costs in November 2010). PressBof was not transparent about the cost of the first (and did not respond to the Media Standards Trust’s letter requesting further information); will it now be transparent about the cost of the Northern & Shell withdrawal?
• PressBof has previously refused to provide any assurances on what this means for the PCC’s level of service. Will it now provide assurances that the level of service the PCC provides will be maintained?
• Given the importance of national newspaper contributions to the sustainability of the PCC, will PressBof now lift the secrecy surrounding those contributions, and publish information on who pays for the PCC and how much each pays?

Martin Moore, the director of the Media Standards Trust, said: “The withdrawal of Northern & Shell raises fundamental questions about the sustainability of the current system of self-regulation. The PCC and PressBof need to reassure the public that they will continue to have adequate avenues of complaint. Northern & Shell needs to be clear as to how it will, in future, fulfil its obligations to its readers and to the broader public.

“The Press Complaints Commission argues consistently that it exists as a better alternative – and deterrent to – statutory regulation. It now needs to explain what impact Northern & Shell’s withdrawal will have on the general public, and what it plans to do to ensure the comprehensiveness and sustainability of press self-regulation.”

Update

The MST reports on its PCC Watch site that the PCC and PressBof have responded to their questions.

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In an interview on this morning’s Radio 4 Today show, Max Mosley outlined the reasons behind his attempt to change privacy laws in Strasbourg today.

The former FIA chairman outlined the ruling as a “really very simple thing” in which newspapers alert public figures if information “they know [public figures] should like to keep private” was to be published.

Claiming the figure was based on information from the PCC Rule Committee, Mosley said: “In 99 out of 100 cases if [the press] are going to write something of any interest about someone they will approach the person first.”

He argued that the MPs involved in the expenses scandal were approached before their information was printed and that it was only when “newspapers are concealing from you something they know is illegal and then printing it, knowing that you can’t put it right” that the new rules would apply. Mosley said that this was “a very narrow point [he's] in Strasbourg on”.

As the Guardian reported this morning, members of the press are contesting Mosley’s proposed changes to the law:

The case is being vigorously contested by a number of media organisations, which argue that the change would create opportunities for injunctions, delaying publication and violating the media’s right to freedom of expression.

“[Mosley] is a wealthy international public figure with a penchant for satisfying sexual desires by beating women, and being beaten by them,” said Geoffrey Robertson QC, representing media organisations who have intervened in the case. “He pays prostitutes to engage with him in mildly sadomasochistic orgies, and campaigns for a law that will enable the truth about such ‘private’ conduct to remain secret. The vast scope of the new law which is contended for … is so vague as to be unworkable.”

You can hear Mosley’s interview on Radio 4 here.

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If only people knew more about the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), says its public affairs director Will Gore, they could learn to love it.

The body was set up in 1991 from the ruins of the Press Council, but Gore says that despite having existed for nearly 20 years, there are still “massive issues of perception” around it.

“There are a lot of people who don’t [know how effective the PCC is],” he tells journalism.co.uk. “The encouraging thing is that of the 60-65 per cent that did have a view on effectiveness in the last survey, three quarters thought the PCC was effective or very effective.

“When people know more I think they have quite a positive view.”

Gore, who has worked at the PCC for 10 years, cites the view that it is run by the newspaper industry as one of the most common misconceptions.

“When you actually explain to people that all of the staff here are non-journalists, that the majority of committee members are nothing to do with the industry … they go ‘Oh okay, it’s not quite what I thought.’”

He’s also keen to dispel the idea that the PCC won’t consider headlines or third-party complaints on points of fact, although he admits it used to be “much stricter” on who could complain. Contrary to what its detractors claim, he says, the PCC does make a difference to newspapers’ reporting.

“If you look at newspapers 20 or 25 years ago, the level of intrusiveness into the lives of ordinary people is not as severe as it was, the levels of outright discrimination against individuals is not as severe as it was, the homophobia that was so prevalent and a lot of the racist attitudes have improved,” he says.

One common criticism of the PCC is that it has no power to fine newspapers for serious or repeated breaches of the Code of Conduct, but Gore says that this “massively underestimates” the impact of the PCC’s adjudications on newspapers and editors.

Even if fines were introduced, he doesn’t believe it wouldn’t prevent the worst reporting – after all, there are fines for libel and breaches of Ofcom’s code, but it doesn’t stop the rules being broken.

In fact, he says, the PCC’s option to demand an explanation from a publisher for repeated breaches has led to people losing their jobs, although he’s reluctant to give any details of private disciplinary matters.

Gore is also critical of people who don’t trust the PCC and so refuse to complain to it, saying that “to use that as an excuse to not bother complaining is a bit lame”.

“I’m not saying the PCC is a perfect organisation and I’m not here to sit around and defend the British press, but our view is that we want to encourage people to engage with us so we can engage with the industry and continue to raise standards.”

Newspapers, he says, rarely deliberately print stories they know aren’t true, and claims the “vast bulk are just cock-ups, or when something’s been left out and it changes the meaning”.

“The misconception is that newspapers will run stories to increase sales and it’ll increase sales so much that it doesn’t really matter what happens in terms of adjudication. It’s hard to see that a newspaper would make so much more money out of an outrageous story. If you put on 10,000 in sales and it’s a newspaper that sells for 20p, that’s nothing.”

He admits that the prominence of corrections, particularly for front-page stories, is still an issue, but insists that it’s improved since he started at the Commission.

“When I was first here we did let newspapers get away with an apology on page 36 and that has absolutely changed.

“We have had a number of occasions where there has either been an apology or a trail on the front page. Things are going in the right direction.”

Staunch opponents of the PCC are unlikely to agree, but Gore is adamant that, despite criticism, self-regulation remains the best system of accountability for the press.

“There will always be occasions when people make complaints to us and are absolutely convinced they’ve got it right and we don’t uphold it and people will then say ‘This just shows the PCC doesn’t deal with headlines or doesn’t deal with photos’.

“I think actually the system we currently operate is effective.”

Jamie Thunder is a student on the Investigative Journalism MA at City University London. He runs the blog http://exclarotive.wordpress.com/ and can be found on Twitter @jdthndr.

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The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint from television broadcaster Clare Balding against language used in a television review by AA Gill, published by the The Sunday Times in July.

Balding complained that a reference to her in the article as a “dyke on a bike” was a pejorative reference to her sexuality, irrelevant to the programme and a breach of Clause 12 (discrimination) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

The newspaper had defended its columnist on grounds of freedom of expression and said the word “dyke” had been reclaimed as “an empowering, not offensive, term” by two “Dykes on Bikes” organisations. But the PCC said in this case the term was used in a “demeaning” way.

In this case, the commission considered that the use of the word “dyke” in the article – whether or not it was intended to be humorous – was a pejorative synonym relating to the complainant’s sexuality. The context was not that the reviewer was seeking positively to “reclaim” the term, but rather to use it to refer to the complainant’s sexuality in a demeaning and gratuitous way. This was an editorial lapse which represented a breach of the Code, and the newspaper should have apologised at the first possible opportunity.

See the full adjudication here…

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A relatively new blog has been set up by the Media Standards Trust to provide regular scrutiny of the work of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) and press self-regulation in the UK.

As the allegations of phone hacking against the News of the World rumble on, PCC Watch could become a regular read. The Media Standards Trust has been critical of the PCC’s investigation into the practice in the past and has already blogged its views on calls for the body to launch a fresh inquiry.

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