'Unanswerable' case for PCC reform, argues IFJ in new report

More calls for reform of the Press Complaints Commission have been published in the wake of the Culture, Media and Sport committee report, in the International Federation of Journalists' investigation into the PCC's handling of the phone hacking affair.

Belgian journalist and writer Jean-Paul Marthoz was asked by the IFJ, an affiliate of the NUJ, to investigate following the PCC's own widely criticised report published in December 2009 and as part of the IFJ's Ethical Journalism Initiative.

The report's conclusions follow the CMS committee's call for reform and renaming of the body last week - to which the initial reaction of the Press Complaints Commission was "not promising" said committee chair John Whittingdale, in the Guardian today.

In his report, published from Brussels today, Marthoz argues that there is an 'unanswerable' case for reform of the PCC.

• Report PDF at this link.

He has found, the IFJ states, that the actions of the PCC "have weakened its credibility and revealed major failings in its mandate and its ways of operating". Marthoz found the body's investigation into phone hacking "simplistic, surprising, a further failure of self-regulation".

The PCC chose an "easy road" with its first 2007 report into phone hacking at News of the World, he writes: "The 2007 PCC inquiry or investigation reminds us of the advertising for Alka Seltzer in the Prohibition era: it looked like alcohol, and to a distracted or complacent public, it might even taste of alcohol, but it was not alcohol."

In its second inquiry in 2009, re-opened following the Guardian's revelations in July, it was "too eager to prove the Guardian wrong and comes to its own conclusion - that it was not misled - with too much haste and without having carried out a more thorough investigation than in 2007."


Among the recommendations discussed in the report:

• The PCC should reform, expand and improve the complaints system - by loosening the restrictions on third party complaints, for example.

• A reformed PCC should be able to investigate breaches of the code without requiring a complaint

• The PCC should become a "press council" and take its cue from other organisations in Europe.

• The PCC should be more transparent: by revealing information on the payments made by newspapers to the regulator.

• A reformed PCC should push for the introduction of a permanent corrections box and for the respect of the right of reply.

"The time has come for partisans of self-regulation to demonstrate the value of journalism as a public good and media's real commitment to the highest ethical standards in a profession that is a key pillar of a vibrant and principled democracy," writes Marthoz.

The IFJ case study will be included in a book on media accountability systems to be published later this year. 

"It is clear that the PCC got itself into the no-man's-land of ethical journalism," said Aidan White, IFJ general secretary, in the release announcing the report.

"Our report shows that it was hopelessly caught between two forces at work in journalism that pull in diametrically opposing directions. In doing so it exposed its own profound weakness as a credible self-regulator."

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