PCC must take stronger stance on journalists who break the law, says Rusbridger

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) needs to be more curious in cases of journalists breaking the law and more serious about privacy, the Guardian's editor has said.

The commission has become 'more of a mediator, less of a regulator' over the last 10 years, Alan Rusbridger told a House of Commons select committee on press standards, privacy and libel.

The industry body suffers from not being a conventional regulator like the General Medical Council [GMC] or Law Society, he said.

"Full marks for mediation and for being free and quick, but it [the PCC] is going to have to think about its role going forward," said Rusbridger.

"There's clearly divergence between the PCC's jurisprudence and the courts' (...) It was remarkably incurious about the Motorman case [which exposed journalists' use of an agency to obtain illegal information] and the Goodman [the former News of the World journalist caught intercepting mobile phone messages] case.

"There were a lot of people writing, a lot of court cases, about the industrial scale of uses of private detectives and I don't think the PCC handled that in a particularly aggressive or inquiring way. That makes it look odd to outsiders.

"If that was the GMC or Law Society and there was prima facie evidence of lawbreaking, most regulators would have stepped in."

Rusbridger praised the commission for bringing newspapers together under one code, but a more effective form of redress from the PCC for privacy breaches by the press could forestall increasing court action in such cases, he said.

"The PCC has to send a signal to say that we are serious about privacy. We acknowledge that the Human Rights Act has section 8, but you don't have to go to the courts to offer an address," said Rusbridger.

"If they could think constructively about that, rather than just criticising the courts, that would be a more affective way of doing that."

If the PCC was a more effective method of redress in privacy cases, Private Eye would consider rejoining it, editor Ian Hislop, who also addressed the committee, said.

The Eye's current decision to be outside of the commission is in part a result of 'two and a bit pages' in each edition, which carry criticism of journalists, many of which appear on the PCC's board, said Hislop.

"I've always felt Private Eye should be out of that. It means that we just obey or we are judged by the law rather than by the PCC," he said.

More coverage from Journalism.co.uk on the select committee's inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel:

• 'The PCC's problem is not its code; it's how it is applied, says Greenslade' (April 2009)
• 'Prior notification under privacy law is 'censorship by judicial process', says Hislop' (May 2009)

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