The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) is a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers. The PCC have no legal powers so therefore all newspapers and magazines voluntarily contribute to the costs of, and adhere to the rulings of the commission make the industry self regulatory.
It is evident that the PCC (Press Complaints Commission) are in need of reform seeing as the phone hacking scandal took place. The PCC are where people go if they have a complaint about a certain item that has been published. The PCC have the power to prevent newspaper companies from publishing articles on a given topic but this is after a complaint has been made. It is believed that the PCC have the public's best interest at heart but it is proven that they are not very effective.Once an article has been published the damage has been done so there needs to be higher security and requirment levels to ensue the public needs are met.
In 2009 the PCC received more than 25,000 complaints. These complaints came about after an article appeared in the Daily Mail written by Jan Moir about the death of Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. Moir had described events leading up the death as 'sleazy' and 'less than respectable'.
On the 17th February the PCC confirmed that although it was 'uncomfortable with the tenor of the columnists remarks' it would not uphold the complaints made. The Guardian newspaper also rejected that social media are to be bought under the remit of the PCC after it ruled in February 2011 that information posted on twitter should be considered public and publishable by newspapers.
The code of practice is used when members of the commission adjudicate whether the code has indee been broken, and, if so, suggest appropriate measures of correction. Many publishers have added clauses the contracts of editors of newspapers and magazines giving them the option to dismiss editors who are judged to have breached the PCC Code of Practice.
One example of the ineffectiveness of the PCC is the phone hacking scandal. The phone hacking scandal that took place recently involved news international. On the 11th June 2005 a royal correspondant, Clive Goodman wrote a story about medical treatment that Prince William received. It was sure that this information had been leaked seeing as only close relatives and friends of the Prince knew this information. This led to suspicion of interference with voicemail. The phone hacking scandal proved that the PCC doesn't have the necessary powers to prevent things like this from occuring. The PCC received extensive criticism for its lack of action in the news of the world phone hacking affair, including MPs and Prime Minister David Cameron, who called for it to be replaced with a new system in July 2011.
The Ryan Giggs case is a perfect example of the problem of regulation in the digital age. A large number of celebrities have taken out injunctions against newspapers in a bid to prevent them from printing stories about them. Some newspapers or broadcasters in other territories might decide to repoty the case as the injunction does not apply overseas. Because of this it is easy via google to find out the details that the newspapers have been prevented from printing. This is one of the ways in which the PCC are effective because they enable injunctions but it could be seen that they are in need of more power due to the fact the information can still be published online.
Improving the PCC will take a lot of enhanced responsibility that should be guaranteed to the public. One of the ways in which the PCC could be reformed would be to state strict levels of requirments that publishing companies must follow and if they dont abide by these requirments then a fine will be imposed. This would be an effective measure because it means that unsolicited articles will not be published and it would hopefully decrease the amount of complaints that the PCC receive.
I am fully aware that in order to reform the PCC they would need to go through many legislations in order to gain the new investigatory powers. These powers will enable the PCC to get to the bottom of stories which include very expensive individuals such as Rupert Murdoch. With these powers it will decrease the newspaper companies freedom to release articles containing information that could be seen as inappropriate. Not only would this protect people's privacy but it would protect large companies and businesses as a whole.
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