'What Meyer didn't say: a speech ignoring the real shortcomings of press self-regulation'

Action has never been one of the strong suits of the Press Complaints Commission (PCC). Reaction has always been its forté, indeed it is the primary purpose of the complaints body.

And so it is with Sir Christopher Meyer's speech in Manchester. Without Paul Dacre's astonishing broadside against Justice Eady at the Society of Editors, and without the announcement last week that the DCMS Select Committee would shortly begin an inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel, it is unlikely Sir Christopher would have been so forthcoming about the shortcomings of the PCC.

Of course the outgoing Chairman does not refer to them as shortcomings. They are about moving forward and taking opportunities. He cites two particular strategic challenges: 'how self-regulation should move forward when it must co-exist with a developing law on privacy' and how 'we exploit further the opportunities presented by the digitalisation of the media'.

But do not be misled. Shortcomings they most certainly are. Had press self-regulation performed its role effectively then we would not have the incremental development of a privacy law based on Article 8 of the Human Rights Act. Had the PCC taken action in recent cases of inaccurate newspaper coverage, then we may not have yet another DCMS inquiry about press standards, only 18 months after the last.

Even now the PCC has not examined the press' coverage of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann. As Brian Cathcart wrote last month in the New Statesman: "Not one editor and, so far as I know, not one reporter has lost his or her job or even faced formal reprimand as a result of the McCann coverage. There has been no serious inquest in the industry and no organised attempt to establish what went wrong, while no measures have been taken to prevent a repetition."

The McCanns themselves, remember, did not even complain to the PCC about inaccuracy. They asked it for help on behalf of their children, but to address the widespread inaccuracies in the newspapers they went straight to their lawyer. Robert Murat and the so called 'Tapas Seven' did the same.

In all three cases the court found newspapers had published dozens, in some cases hundreds of articles that were completely unfounded and, in some cases, 'grossly defamatory'. If, even in cases as egregious as this, people do not have confidence in press self-regulation, then it is clear the system is not working.

Part of the reason for which must be that the PCC is not what it says it is. It is not, as Meyer says in his speech, 'a model of independent regulation'.

How can it be when it is neither independent nor a regulator? It is entirely paid for by the industry via the Press Board of Finance. Its code of practice is devised entirely by the industry – by working editors and senior executives on the Editorial Code Committee. It does not monitor standards as other regulators like Ofcom and the ASA  do. Nor can it impose any sanctions, as other regulators do.

The Press Complaints Commission is, as its name suggests, a complaints body. It reacts to complaints made by the public and seeks to resolve them. Wherever possible, it does this by mediation. This is an important and valuable role but it is not regulation.

Even in this role it is not effective. In his speech Meyer points to the ever increasing number of complaints as evidence of PCC success.

He does not mention the ever decreasing number of adjudications (or rulings) that the press body is making. Between October 2007 and March 2008 (the most recent complaints statistics available), there were 2,946 complaints. Of these, the PCC ruled on just 9, or 0.3 per cent.

In other words, for every 300 complaints, the PCC ruled on only one. Based on these odds, your chances of receiving an adjudication, should you complain, are about the same as Togo's of winning the World Cup (the odds of Togo winning the 2006 World Cup were 300-1 – it ended up finishing bottom of Group G).

Meyer is right when he says that the PCC is not doing enough. He is also right when he says, 'the current architecture of media content regulation in the UK – PCC, Ofcom, BBC Trust – looks increasingly unsustainable'.

But the reasons for this are not, as he suggests, simply due to media convergence. They are due to deficiencies in the existing system and, until those deficiencies are addressed, press self-regulation in its current form will not survive the next decade, let alone the rest of the 21st century.

Martin Moore is director of the Media Standards Trust and blogs at http://mediastandardstrust.blogspot.com/.

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