Tag Archives: stephen abell

PCC director speaks out over Lord Puttnam’s criticisms of regulatory body

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The director of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) Stephen Abell has come out fighting in an article on Index on Censorship after Labour peer Lord Puttnam said earlier this week that the regulatory body should be shut down.

Speaking in a speech on parliament and young people on Tuesday, Puttnam said the PCC should be scrapped if newspapers failed to improve their behaviour within a year. In comments made to MediaGuardian, he said the PCC should work to prevent “the slow reduction of politics to a form of gruesome spectator sport” and “ensure the general representation of young people is more representative of reality”.

Abell says Puttnam’s remarks were not based on “well-informed and considered comment” about the PCC’s role and work, but says they are a starting point for debate:

Lord Puttnam is keen to assert that the PCC “cannot” instruct newspapers to be nicer to politicians and young people (two items on his wish list) without pausing to ask the question: should it? There must be the argument that if any body – even a self-regulatory body like the PCC – were to dictate the tone of political coverage, or suggest that there should be more positive stories on youth issues, the result would be a very significant restriction on freedom of expression.

(…)

However, and this is very important, he is right that the PCC must be active agents in maintaining newspaper standards. The coverage of politics, or of issues affecting the young, are two important areas. The PCC must ensure that we hold editors to account for what they report and how they report it. We must ensure that inaccuracies are corrected, intrusions and distortions prevented.

Related reading on Journalism.co.uk: Stephen Abell’s first interview as the new director of the PCC.

PCC defends phone hacking report: ‘We can’t do things that the police can do’

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The Press Complaints Commission yesterday denied it had mishandled its report into phone hacking, even though the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport select committee found the body’s findings “simplistic and surprising”.

Speaking to journalists at the launch of its annual review for 2009, its director Stephen Abell, and chair, Baroness Peta Buscombe defended the report that was condemned by the Guardian and the Media Standards Trust.

Where the self-regulation body had failed, Stephen Abell said, was in explaining its function and what its powers could achieve.

But he said it had done what it set out to do: to investigate whether it had been misled in 2007 and whether incidents of phone hacking were ongoing.

“We have to be extraordinarily careful,” said Buscombe, “not to do anything that would interfere with other investigative powers, i.e. the police … we’re very careful not to tread on other toes.”

The Guardian’s allegations in July 2009, however, concerned activity in 2006/7, a point Journalism.co.uk put to the PCC’s chair, Peta Buscombe and director, Stephen Abell.

“It was reported, there were claims that it was ongoing,” said Abell, with which Buscombe agreed.

“It was also a suggestion that it was ongoing at the time, it was certainly reported that way and we made clear in 2009 that’s what we were interested in,” he said.

The inquiry launched in 2009 was responding to “notions” made to the PCC that it was ongoing, said Abell.

“I have been very clear that on my watch if it was happening, if there was a whiff of it we would be onto it straight away but we would have to be exceedingly careful,” argued Buscombe.

“We can’t do things that the police can do, if we were to do that we would have to be regulated by the state, which I think is a very bad path for the press to go in,” she said.

But did the PCC consider it had been misled, considering the subsequent court settlements – with Gordon Taylor – for example?

“Were we materially misled in the context of what we were trying to do in 2007? It wasn’t the function of the PCC to duplicate the police investigation in 2007,” said Abell.

“What we did in 2007, was look prospectively not retrospectively,” he said.

Would the PCC act upon any new allegations, such as more recent ones made by the Guardian? If there was “material evidence,” said Stephen Abell. It was important not to go off “speculation,” added Buscombe.

PCC upholds complaint over Rod Liddle’s Spectator post; first ever blog censure

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Just in from the Press Complaints Commission: its first ever magazine/newspaper blog censure – for Rod Liddle’s 92 word Spectator post on 5 December 2009, that claimed an “overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”. A reader’s complaint of inaccuracy was upheld.

“This is a significant ruling because it shows that the PCC expects the same standards in newspaper and magazine blogs that it would expect in comment pieces that appear in print editions,” said PCC director, Stephen Abell.

“There is plenty of room for robust opinions, views and commentary but statements of fact must still be substantiated if and when they are disputed.  And if substantiation isn’t possible, there should be proper correction by the newspaper or magazine in question.”

[Update: Listen to PCC director Stephen Abell discuss the ruling on the BBC Radio 4 Today Programme at this link]

Here’s the PCC’s statement:

The Press Complaints Commission has upheld a complaint about an entry by Rod Liddle in his blog for the Spectator.  This is the first time that the PCC has censured a newspaper or magazine over the content of a journalistic blog.

The piece in question was published on 5 December 2009 and claimed that “the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community”.  A reader complained that the statement was incorrect.

In concluding that the article was indeed in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, the PCC recognised the magazine’s argument that the nature of a blog post is often provocative and conducive to discussion.  It was certainly true in this case, for example, that a number of readers had taken issue with Mr Liddle’s claim and had commented on the blog.

However, the Commission did not agree that the magazine could rely on publishing critical reaction as a way of abrogating its responsibilities under the Code.  While it had provided some evidence to back up Mr Liddle’s position, it had not been able to demonstrate that the ‘overwhelming majority’ of crime in all the stated categories had been carried out by members of the African-Caribbean community.

Nor could it successfully argue that the claim was purely the columnist’s opinion – rather, it was a statement of fact.  As such, the Commission believed that “the onus was on the magazine to ensure that it was corrected authoritatively online”.  In the absence of such remedial action the Commission upheld the complaint.

What does it take to get a front page apology?

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One of the points of confusion and controversy in the Press Complaints Commission code for newspapers is that:

ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion once recognised must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and – where appropriate – an apology published.

Furthermore, the editors’ codebook states:

“the positioning of apologies or corrections should generally reflect the seriousness of the error – and that would include front page apologies where appropriate.”

(my emphasis)

This was an issue raised in front of the House of Commons select committee in Feburary last year: that the apologies offered were inadequate for the mistakes made.

Jonathan Coad, head of the litigation group at Swan Turton Solicitors showed the House of Commons Culture, Media and Sport Committee a copy of the Daily Star carrying front page allegations about Peaches Geldof’s sexual behaviour. Following complaints against the article, a correction was made which was 2.6 per cent of the size of the original article and appeared on page two of the newspaper, he said.

“The newspaper agreed – as they could do no other – that the story was inaccurate but what they wouldn’t do was put the correction on the front page,” said Coad. Corrections favour newspaper groups rather than a complainant or the general public, he added. The PCC is in “favour of those who set it up in the first place,” he said.

But the PCC maintains that a system is in place. When I interviewed the director of the PCC, Stephen Abell in February this year, he said that the length and terms of adjudications already change:

[The PCC] can control how much the newspaper has to print by the length of its own adjudication. I think the process is already in place.

(Update: In the comments below, the PCC emphasises this comment was made in regards to ‘adjudications’ not specifically ‘apologies’)

When the select committee published its recommendations last month it said: “The interpretation of the Code’s requirement for an apology to be printed with ‘due  prominence’ remains a matter of controversy”.

In oral evidence to us, the then Minister Barbara Follett acknowledged that the placing of apologies was a problem: “From my own personal experience, the offence can be on page two in large type and the apology basically somewhere around the ads in very small type, and that is something which I would like to see changed.”

The committee recommended:

The printing of corrections and apologies should be consistent and needs to reflect the prominence of the first reference to the original article. Corrections and apologies should be printed on either an earlier, or the same, page as that first reference, although they need not be the same size. Newspapers should notify the PCC in advance of the proposed location and size of a correction or apology; if the PCC indicates that the requirement for ‘due prominence’ has not been fulfilled and the paper takes no remedial action, then this non-compliance should be noted as part of the published text of the correction or apology. We recommend that this should be written into clause one of the PCC Code.

So, under the guidance of the select committee, we could see a strengthened apology and correction system come into play (the PCC is considering its recommendations at the next meeting of the Commission).

Could this mean more front page apologies in the UK? We might look to the US for encouragement.

Tabloid Watch and Regret the Error recently noted that Indiana’s Star Press newspaper went the extra mile with a detailed apology on its front page, correcting a mistake about Ball State athletic director Tom Collins and his employment intentions. I contacted its author, sports editor Greg Fallon, to find out why the decision had been taken.

“We felt that a typical correction buried inside the newspaper or a story on the sports front would not sufficiently set the record straight,” Fallon said.

“Beyond that, I’ll just say that we were not only sorry to Tom Collins for the error and wanted to correct it, but we also owed an explanation to our readers on how, exactly, the error happened.

“That transparency, we feel, strengthens the relationship between reader and newspaper. In the end, we were able to explain it all best in a column.”

Wow. I’m with Tabloid Watch on this one: “It’s almost impossible to imagine a British newspaper – particularly a national – writing something such as this on their front page. And yet, why shouldn’t they?”

But what a cultural shift we’d need to see this happen. Newspapers might not be holding the front page quite yet, but they should take heed from the Geldof vs Daily Star case.

As the Guardian reported in January 2010, Geldof, represented by Jonathan Coad, was unsatisfied with the PCC ruling and 2.6 per cent apology on page 2 and took the matter to court. The Daily Star was forced to pay (undisclosed) substantial damages and legal costs:

“The defendant refused to publish a retraction and apology on its front page but instead published it on page two,” said Coad.

“As the publication was substantially smaller, the claimant considered this to be unacceptable as it was not, in her view, adequately prominent.

“The Press Complaints Commission adjudicated upon the prominence and found it to be proportionate.

“It is for this reason that the claimant now wishes to make this statement in open court to make the falsity of this allegation a matter of public record.”

Stephen Abell officially takes over as PCC director

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It was an appointment announced in November 2009, but today Stephen Abell starts as director of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). In a release issued today, the PCC says:

He assumes responsibility for the day-to-day running of the Secretariat, succeeding Tim Toulmin who announced he was standing down from the role earlier in the year. Stephen was previously deputy director.

Background: PCC appoints Stephen Abell as new director