Enemies of Reason Poundshop potshots at the media moral maze.

7Dec/094

Any suggestions?

The PCC, the people who don't regulate our press, are asking for suggestions.

I think it would be worth telling them, and the chairman of the Code of Practice Committee Paul Dacre (Yes, that name does ring a bell for some reason but I can't quite work out why), what changes could be made to the editors' code of practice. As the Code Committee Secretary writes:

It welcomes suggestions from the public, civil society and the industry on how the Code might be revised to improve the system of self-regulation of the press, of which it is an essential component.

If you are inspired by this and would like to write a detailed, polite and respectful letter to the PCC to try and invite them to change their code for the better, please CC me in on it if you've got time - and we'll see how many of our suggestions are accepted by the committee, and how much they really do listen to the voice of the public.

I will of course be submitting my own suggestions in the fullness of time, which may include the following:

- For editors not to publish intrusive reports on the background of someone who is missing and may be dead
- For editors not to publish unpleasant polemic about people who have recently died, based on their sexuality
- For editors not to publish series of articles which manipulate statistics or simply use evidence that is factually incorrect to mislead readers on subjects such as religion, race and immigration

I wonder what the committee, and its chairman Paul Dacre (funny, but I'm sure I've heard of him somewhere before), will make of that? I'm sure they will give due consideration to the subjects at hand.

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Comments (4) Trackbacks (0)
  1. I think it would be a good idea if the PCC were able to regulate and stop the instances of newspapers stalking young children just because their parents are celebrities

  2. Perhaps you should include 'health and science' in addition to "…religion, race and immigration."

    For example, anything at badscience.net that mention, oh, I dunno, MMR, homeopathy, AIDS…

  3. For me it's less that Dacre is Editor of the Daily Fail, but that he is Editor in Chief of the Fail Group. And he's chairman of the Code of Practice Committee? Good grief.

  4. I would like to see the punishment that all apologies, particularly for factually incorrect information and headlines, must be on the same page, same format and use up the same column inches as the originial article. It might make them a little more thoughtful about what they do if they have to have IMMIGRATION FIGURES – WE LIED as their headline on their front page and if, because they padded it out with rubbish, they have to fill up the space with 'lies, lies, lies, lies lies' then all the better.


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