Accounts vary as to the effectiveness of UK press self-regulation. There has always been criticism. Periodically there have been official inquiries and critical reports. In 2007 a parliamentary report concluded that self-regulation continued to be the best way to maintain press standards while ensuring freedom of the press. Statutory regulation, it argued, ‘is a hallmark of authoritarianism and risks undermining democracy’ (House of Commons 2007). Supporters of the PCC claim that it sets a standard and acts as a deterrent. The most recent House of Commons Media, Culture and Sport committee report (2010: 118) observed that ‘voices from inside the industry, including editors, journalists and media lawyers, generally supported the PCC and saw little or no need for change’. However, the same report noted that ‘in the evidence presented to our inquiry, the general effectiveness of the PCC has been repeatedly called into question’. Concern had been voiced by media lawyers, independent organizations like The Media Standards Trust, the Campaign for Broadcasting Freedom, the National Union of Journalists, some journalists and editors, and media commentators. The report recommended that the PCC’s powers be enhanced, that PCC membership be rebalanced to give the lay members a two thirds majority, and that practising journalists be invited to serve on the PCC’s Committees’.
Some newspapers do go further than the PCC guidelines. For example, the Guardianand its Sunday stable-mate The Observer have their own editorial codes and readers’ editors – journalists who listen to the complaints and concerns of the audience and act on their behalf, correcting errors and writing columns on the papers’ journalism. The Guardian’s reader’s editor reportedly handled 14,435 communications and published 664 corrections in the paper in the seven months ending May 2010. Stephen Pritchard, reader’s editor of the Observer, handled more than 10,000 complaints in 2009, and was also President of the Organisation of News Ombudsmen (ONO) (The Guardian 2010). At the time of writing, the ONO’s website did not list any other UK members other than the reader’s editors of the Guardian and the Observer.19 Other newspapers do respond to complaints, though. The Times, too, has rigorous procedures for responding to reader’s queries and complaints (House of Commons 2008b: 54).
As noted, the broadcasting codes are more comprehensive. They also have the backing of law. Thus, Harcup (2007: 117) observes: ‘the contrast with the cosier world of print self-regulation can be seen as soon as you go onto the Ofcom website and browse the adjudications on complaints about broadcasters’ (p. 117). The BBC, too, has an impressive Complaints Homepage on its website where it posts regular reports on the main themes in all complaints received monthly, those complaints referred to the Editorial Complaints Unit, and any appeals to the BBC Trust.20
