Press Complaints Commission

[Joe Le Taxi]

Phone hacking: Buscombe admits News of the World lied to PCC | Media | guardian.co.uk

 

News

Media

News of the World

 

Phone hacking: Buscombe admits News of the World lied to PCC

 

Interviewed on BBC by Andrew Neil, press watchdog chief says she is 'deeply unhappy with what happened'

 

reddit this

 

Tara Conlan

guardian.co.uk, Tuesday 5 July 2011 14.46 BST

Article history

 

Press Complaints Commission chairman Baroness Buscombe said on Tuesday lunchtime that she was lied to by the News of the World over phone hacking, in a combative television interview with veteran journalist Andrew Neil.

 

She said she did not know the extent of the scandal when she came on board the PCC in 2009, but admitted she had been "misled by the News of the World" – after she had previously concluded just the opposite.

 

Two years ago the PCC published a report following allegations it was misled by the News of the World during an inquiry into phone hacking at the paper it conducted in 2007. At the time, Buscombe put out a statement arguing that: "Having reviewed all the information available, we concluded that we were not materially misled."

 

However, appearing on the BBC's The Daily Politics, Buscombe admitted the PCC had not been told the truth. She said: "There's only so much we can do when people are lying to us. We know now that I was not being given the truth by the News of the World."

 

Facing a combative Neil, Buscombe was forced to deny she had sided with the under-fire tabloid newspaper that is now accused of using a private investigator to hack into the phone of murdered schoolgirl Milly Dowler. When Neil said she sided with the News of the World, Buscombe interrupted him, saying, "I didn't".

 

Buscombe refused to be drawn further on specifics, saying she was angry with the newspaper. Instead she went on: "My answer to this is the PCC takes all of this incredibly seriously. I'm seeing all the publishers and proprietors, I'm deeply unhappy with what happened."

 

After Neil repeatedly asked her to name "one useful thing" the PCC has done over the issue, Buscombe said: "What I'm saying is we've beefed up our sanctions, we're making more demands, I've demanded to see all the proprietors."

 

Neil also questioned the role of the PCC in the scandal, asking: "Have you exposed any of the phone hacking?" Buscombe responded: "We had one complaint about phone hacking which was withdrawn."

 

Neil suggested that after the PCC "played no part" in bringing about the phone hacking revelations that the newspaper industry should be subject to statutory regulation. She replied: "All I will say is that I think we have to be very careful about newspaper industry that's regulated by the state."

 

She refused to go into the issue of the PCC reaching a settlement with Mark Lewis, a lawyer who is involved with bringing allegations of phone hacking against the News of the World, after he sued the press watchdog for libel.

 

It is understood the PCC paid Lewis damages over comments Buscombe made about how many people reportedly had their voicemails intercepted.

 

Reading this via my journalism studies and the more I read the more I think the PCC is becoming more and more insignificant. Do you all think this is a good thing and we should get rid of the PCC altogether and set up a different regulator or should we support the current system?

 

(Yes, your replies will help me with an essay)

 

Go GF, go!

[Joe Le Taxi]

Anyone?

[Mr. Beast]

Phone hacking: Buscombe admits News of the World lied to PCC | Media | guardian.co.uk

 

 

 

Reading this via my journalism studies and the more I read the more I think the PCC is becoming more and more insignificant. Do you all think this is a good thing and we should get rid of the PCC altogether and set up a different regulator or should we support the current system?

 

(Yes, your replies will help me with an essay)

 

Go GF, go!

 

some independence would help

Press Complaints Commission >> About the PCC >> Who's Who >> Code Committee

 

- as with any other regulatory body be it the FSA or whoever they tend to be 'onside' with the organisations they are meant to regulate. a slightly more adversarial relationship might have better results. but certainly there shouldn't be a revolving door between the boards of newspapers/banks etc and the bodies that regulate them. i'm not even talkin about basic old fashioned corruption but this mostly:

Regulatory capture - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[Joe Le Taxi]

Cheers pal, have some rep.

[Mr. Beast]

actually what i'm talking about is a little different. this is self regulation as far as i can tell. i think all those people are currently working for their papers.

[Joe Le Taxi]

This is what I found on Wikipedia:

 

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 is funded by the annual levy it charges newspapers and magazines. It has no legal powers - all newspapers and magazines voluntarily contribute to the costs of, and adhere to the rulings of, the Commission, making the industry self-regulating.

 

Hmm, the task I've been set is to as to answer whether I believe the PCC is a credible and successful organisation.

[VladimirIlyich]

It seems most regulatory bodies are either impotent,because the government of the day doesnt allow them to impose harsh penalties on the bodies they are supposed to regulate or simply in the pocket of those companies through backhanders and unseen pressure not transparent to the general public.

This makes them insignificant but it would be dangerous to allow no regulation at all.

The key is finding truly independent regulators although this seems almost impossible currently.

[Joe Le Taxi]

Cheers, gonna start writing this up with the stats I have. I love you guys...

 

Any other opinions are still welcome.

[Mr. Beast]

might have jumped the gun earlier, i'd just been reading alot about financial regulation (exciting stuff) and maybe missed the point. yeah, it's probably a different game to corporate regulation - there's obviously a problem with newspapers being regulated by the state, one of their key roles in a functioning democracy is to question the state. but a truly independent body which would also hold them to account might be a step forward. Ideally you'd have a light touch claiming 'Free Press' assuming they're guardians (sic) of the truth who can be trusted to stay true to their calling. but in reality these are corporate entities dependent on advertisng money, painting pictures, selling lifestyle ideas and beating the drums for wars. there is the fear this leveson inquiry will look at the wrong kind of regulation - i imagine their focus won't be on newspapers becoming organs of state propaganda, or smearing people at the behest of the police nor will it look at their links between the wider state apparatus or those with their advertisers. the stuff like phone hacking, if it's proven not to be in the public interest, can be dealt with by existing laws rather than regualtion. they need some accountability but that power should be given to the public but were entering the realms of a whole other kind of government there..

[Bubble]

I think the PCC in its current form is pretty useless. For one thing newpapers can withdraw from the scheme with no consequences, as the Express and Star both did last year.

 

Some of their decisions have been pretty pathetic. They don't even look at a lot of complaints on the basis that the person complaining was not directly affected by the article in question. They also recently declined a complaint about a Richard Littlejohn column on the basis that readers don't expect him to be factually accurate.

 

I wouldn't be in favour of government regulation as such because a free press is essential, but we definitely need a stronger system than the one currently in place.

 

Anyway, I'm not going to do all your research for you, but you might find these sites useful:

 

Tabloid Watch: pcc

 

PCC « Enemies of Reason

 

PCC – Angry Mob

[DT]

Lewis, get reading.

 

You can start off with Chris Frost's 'Journalism Ethics and Press Regulation'. He is head of Journalism at JMU.

 

Or Bertrand's 'Media Ethics and accountability systems'.

 

It doesn't matter what your conclusion is as long as you back it up well.