Daily Express editor Peter Hill has left the Press Complaints Commission.
The move follows two months after his newspaper (along with its sister Sunday and the Star and Sunday Star) published front page apologies and paid the parents of missing child Madeleine McCann £550,000 in libel damages.
He’s replaced on the 17 strong commission by Mail on Sunday editor Peter Wright.
The Hartlepool Mail is using two interactive maps to back its campaigns against potholes and derelict areas of the town.
The Plot the Pots and Plot the Grots maps let users flag up of potholes in need of repair and streets and buildings requiring attention. Readers can also submit photos and update the maps when problems have been fixed.
Also worthy of note is that the newspaper’s site carries the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) kitemark-like logo and provides links for submitting complaints to the editor.
Looking through the paper’s sister sites, this seems to be a common feature across Johnston Press sites – though not common to all news publishers as requested by PCC chairman Sir Christopher Meyer last year.
Many bloggers will ‘fall by the wayside’, because they lack integrity, Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), told the Yorkshire Post.
Meyer, who was speaking ahead of a PCC open day in Leeds, said blogs would undergo a process of ‘natural selection’ by readers:
“There are publications which fall under our responsibility, and there is some wild and woolly stuff on the internet that does not. As far as blogs are concerned, I believe there will be a process of natural selection. Readers will soon sort out what they can rely on and what they can’t. As time goes by, a lot of these bloggers will fall by the wayside.
“If you have a well-known and respected brand, that is very important. The integrity of the brand becomes very important, and if you can see information in that publication or on the website that tells you that you can go to the PCC if you wish to raise a grievance, then it becomes a reinforcement of that brand’s integrity. You’re not going to get that on a blog.”
Meyer also expressed concerns about citizen journalism and again urged readers to use news websites that show ‘integrity’, such as newspaper websites.
While yesterday’s meeting of the House of Lords Communications Committee was less of a nostalgia trip than last week’s session, it seems uncertain what value the evidence given can be to the Lords’ review of media ownership.
First up was Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). Having asked Meyer to explain what the PCC does – and test this out with a few case studies – the moment was ripe for some questions on how the PCC is coping with regulating newspapers online and their video content.
Unfortunately, no such probing was done – as with previous sessions of the committee, the internet was referred to briefly and then dismissed. The review is meant to investigate trends in the ‘provision of news’, so why is little mention of online media being made?
The evidence given last week, where ex-Times editor Simon Jenkins described blogs as ‘bar room chats’ despite being a contributing blogger himself to The Huffington Post, was a case in point example of the committee’s grasp of the digital aspect of the newspaper industry. Jenkins’ comments were met with agreeing nods and laughter and a rehashing of ex-editor’s anecdotes was quickly resumed by speaker and panel.
As a current editor, hearing Rebekah Wade’s evidence was more pertinent than reviewing days gone by with previous employees, who can only offer their perspective on a paper or proprietor with whom they no longer have a connection.
In between attacking the Daily Mail’s content and recycling paragraphs from his diary, Alistair Campbell did his best to point this out to the panel. They could ask him his opinions on specific events and people, but they would remain just that – opinions, he admitted, often based on the personal likes or dislikes that are part of everyone’s character.
When the review reaches a conclusion – and there’s still some time to go – the amount of real insights presented, as opposed to historical overview and personal reflection, are likely to be scarce if the committee’s questions and subjects continue looking backwards and not forwards.
Speaking at Ofcom‘s annual lecture this week, Ed Richards, the regulator’s chief executive, made some fairly non-committal comments about Ofcom’s role in regulating content on the internet.
Understating the matter he noted that there was ‘quite a bit of content’ on the web that was ‘very nasty’.
More usefully he volunteered that in previous incidents where harmful content has been found ‘a voluntary takedown policy’ has proved ‘ineffective’.
“What we need is a policy response that is based on the data and evidence of the prevalence of this kind of content and of the potential harm it causes,” Richards said.
He added that more conclusions on internet content regulation could be drawn when the government’s Byron Review of internet content is completed at the end of November.
While this may be more of an admission to involvment in internet regulation than Ofcom would have made a few years ago, there seems to be an uncertainty over what responsibility the organisation has in this area.
The Communications Act 2003 describes one of Ofcom’s special duties as:
Applying adequate protection for audiences against offensive or harmful material
These duties apply to ‘television, radio, telecommunications and wireless communications services’ – Ofcom’s domain. Yet no provision is made by the act or in the regulator’s principles for where these areas cross-over with the web.
Perhaps Ofcom should take its lead from the Press Complaints Commission (PCC), which has adapted its code to include regulation of audio and video content produced online by newspaper and magazine sites.
Yet, as this addition to the PCC’s code states:
Some websites cannot be categorized as “on-line versions” of newspapers and magazines. Some material – such as syndicated news broadcasts or radio programmes edited by third parties – may already be regulated on-line or off-line by another body …All such material will continue to fall outside the jurisdiction of the PCC.
While regulation offline may be possible in some cases, to prevent content from going unregulated Ofcom needs to more clearly (and quickly) define where exactly its responsibilities lie when it comes to video and audio content online.