The UK may boast one of the world’s strongest newspaper industries, with 300 years of press freedom behind it, but that independence is never far from challenge. The current threats are on two main fronts; privacy and self- regulation of the press. Freedom of the press is crucial as press is essential to democracy, it is through the press the nation learns about the world and makes choices and decisions that may face them. The PPC came into existence in 1991 replacing the discredited Press Council. There was growing public concern and governmental unrest concerning the invasive behaviour and dishonoured journalistic principles of the tabloid press. The Press Complaints Commission (The PCC) is an independent organization that deals with grievances and complaints from public citizens about content in newspapers and magazines. Their fundamental intentions are to harmoniously resolve disputes between the editor and person complaining. It employs a Code of Practice, which constitutes four main aspects; accuracy, privacy, methods of news-gathering and vulnerable members of society. It is a self-regulating body, which is completely independent of the government and newspaper industry and has no legislative functions. They deal with approximately 3000 complaints a year, and are successful in resolving at least 90% of cases where the Code of Practice has been violated. Over the years since the PCC has been established, they have changed the code here and there- when the public criticism of the Press standards has threatened to get out of control, but the PCC still has many downfalls and criticisms. The powers that the PCC has chosen to give itself are restrictive and limited; it won’t stop newspapers from publishing stories if they are circulation- boosting features, even if they are untrue or inaccurate. They won’t award compensation to victims of the press, the press aren’t obliged to print complaints about them, and most importantly they won’t accept complaints from third parties. The death of Princess Diana didn’t even reach the desk of a researcher at PCC, as it was third party material, this event didn’t cause any sort of debate or more research about the ethics of the press. The PCC isn’t taken very seriously when regarded as a self- regulatory body; the daily newspapers are still full of the ‘Code’s’ policies and they don’t seem to take much notice. The true nature and loyalty of the PCC were brought to light in 1997 when the PCC claimed to have dealt with 2944 complaints, when the third party complaints and issues which fell outside of the ‘code’ were subtracted it left only 1510- which were mostly inaccuracy complaints. Only 82 of these were adjudicated, and of those only 32 were upheld, only 1.15% of total complaints. John Tulloch pointed out that the PCC ‘is far more like the customer complaints department of a commercial organization, than it is a regulatory body’. The legal aspect of media regulation is often overlooked in favour of an examination of the media’s own codes and practice, although they do have to take into account the laws of the land. The PCC claim that they maintain a free and responsible press and the central benefits of press self- regulation is that it combines high standards of ethical reporting with a free press. Statutory controls would undermine the freedom of the press, a privacy law wouldn’t work because it would be unacceptable to place this infringement on press freedom. They claim that self regulation doesn’t have any problems of the law, but still provides a system where editors are dedicated to the highest possible ethical standards. Quite a contrast when we see the figures and hear the rules that they leave out. There is also an ‘Official Secrets Act’ which preaches that a newspaper can be prosecuted if it publishes or disseminates information classed as ‘official’, which is thought to endanger national security
The newspaper is the channel, which through a political party can transmit its ideology and advertise its programme; newspapers and political parties have an affinity. Political alignment is a very obvious feature of the press, and there is a notorious party political bias of the printed press. For politicians to use a newspaper just dedicated to their politics, they have to have a very wide appeal, whereas a commercial newspaper is obviously going to appeal more to readers, as it promotes itself as objective and maybe less manipulative, hence the relationship between mass media and political democracy. Post war, the political press campaigning started with Robert Maxwell, although he was more concerned with profit and loss accounts than with political power- except where his commercial interests were directly affected. Proprietors and editors of mass- selling newspapers are constantly flattered by political leaders and media advisors to believe they have a huge influence and decide elections. Newspapers undoubtedly have a huge influence on people, but I feel that the press reinforce, rather than create opinions. There has been a significant shift over the last few years of press partisanship, journalists are no longer content to just analyse or advocate a political party anymore, they want to actually be part of the political process. Since the 1997 campaign, The Sun decided to back Labour on the eve of the election, ever since then their right-wing views have been forced upon their readers. There is only a small section of the press that promotes their left-wing ideologies, The Daily Mirror and The Guardian, the rest are right wing. The rising influence of sceptic journalists in the Daily and Sunday Telegraph and the Daily Mail, assisted a trend of the rise of Euro- sceptics within the Tory Party in the late 1980’s and 1990’s. The British daily press can make people heroes, and can also ruin them at the same time. With the Conservative party becoming weaker over the years, the newspapers may only be their effective opposition to Tony Blair’s government.
OFCOM is a new regulator, designed to be the top regulator for the UK’s converging communications section. The following five existing regulatory bodies are to be merged together to make this new body; the Independent Television Commission (ITC), the Broadcasting Standards Commission (BSC), the Office of Telecommunications (Oftel), the Radio Authority (RAu) and the radiocommunications Agency (RA).
When delved into, the PCC doesn’t look like it’s doing much of a good job regulating the press; I feel that there needs to be stronger regulations enforced. As it is at the moment the press write about what they want, and impose there political and worldly views upon us, so nothing much would change, the ethics of journalists and editors needs to be addressed as with the PCC’s code of third party complaints. Firmer regulations may have its downsides when the public may need to know particular events or stories that may affect them, but stories that are inaccurate and untrue just to get circulation figures, there needs to be something done about it.
