Privacy and Injunctions - Evidence - Parliament

Press Complaints Commission—Written evidence
hour helpline for those with urgent concerns. This leads to the PCC being active in
successfully addressing pre-publication concerns, which is a major area of interest to
this Committee.
13. The most frequent cause of complaint throughout the PCC’s history is inaccurate or
misleading reporting. Looking only at the 767 complaints in 2010 which had merit (i.e.
those where there was a probable breach of the Code of Practice), 87% raised
concerns under Clause 1 (Accuracy) or 2 (Opportunity to reply) of the Code. 23.7%
raised concerns about alleged invasion of privacy under one or more of the following
Clauses of the Code: 3 (Privacy, 4 (Harassment), 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock), 6
(Children), 7 (Children in sex cases), 8 (Hospitals), 9 (Reporting of crime), 11 (Victims
of sexual assault). 359
14. When investigating a complaint which has merit, the PCC’s staff act firstly to resolve
the dispute, seeking an amicable settlement which is to the satisfaction of the
complainant. This was achieved in 72.5% of cases last year. Means by which
complaints can be settled (or, to use regular PCC terminology, ‘resolved’) might
include:
• publication of corrections or apologies;
• publication of clarifying letters;
• removal of inaccurate information from a publication’s website (and from third
party websites);
• amendment of a publication’s internal records to ensure information is not
republished;
• undertakings about future behaviour; or
• donations to charity or ex gratia payments (which are offered at the publication’s
discretion).
15. In cases where an amicable settlement cannot be achieved, the Commission as a
whole will make a decision about whether the Code of Practice has been breached
and whether any remedial action offered by the offending publication is sufficient.
Where there remains an unremedied breach of the Code, the Commission will
uphold the complaint and issue a public adjudication against the newspaper or
magazine in question, which must then publish the adjudication in full.
16. The sanctions of the PCC might, then, be summarised as follows:
• negotiation of an agreed remedy (such as a published apology, published correction,
clarification or explanatory letter, private letter of apology, amendment or removal
of online information, amendment of a publication’s internal records, ex gratia
payments);
• publication of a critical adjudication in the offending publication, which may be
followed by public criticism of a title by the Chairman of the PCC;
• a letter of admonishment from the Chairman to the editor;
359 Since complaints can raise concerns about various issues covered by the Editors’ Code, these figures will total more
than 100%. In addition to concerns about inaccuracy and invasion of privacy, 0.9% of complaints with merit in 2010 related
to Clause 10 (Subterfuge and clandestine devices) of the Code, 3.3% to Clause 12 (Discrimination) and 0.4% to Clauses 13-
16 (Financial journalism, Confidential sources, Witness payments in criminal trials, Payment to criminals).
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