Is the U.K. Press Complaints Commission 'ineffective'? Well, that depends on what you think the PCC actually is...

The common consensus amongst MPs as the phone-hacking scandal engulfed the UK media is that the PCC is redundant. Yet the it is still here, dealing with complaints and settling disputes. In fact, the commission has recently made a significant decision regarding a recent complaint lodged by MP Louise Mensch.

Mensch claimed that The New Statesman had misrepresented her views about Sarah Palin and had portrayed her as a 'cheerleader' for the US politician, which was not in fact the case, the PCC concluded. Initially the MP wanted a printed correction, but the PCC decided an electronic one was all that was necessary, given that the errors were made in online blog posts.

The PCC director Stephen Abell argued that this resolution was "a good example of the self-regulatory mechanism working in the online environment".

However, there are several good examples of why the PCC may not be working outside that environment.

The phone hacking scandal, which reached fever pitch when it was discovered that News International had hacked the phone of murder victim Milly Dowler, has not been in anyway contained by the PCC: hence the allegations of ineffectuality made by David Cameron and others. The PCC was not involved in addressing the objections the aggrieved Dowler family had against the Murodchs and The News of the World. The family has reportedly been compensated with a £3m out of court settlement, after they threatened to bring legal action against News International.

Whether it was the PCC's duty to deal with such matters is debatable; the commission itself has previously told the ministry of justice that '"It is not a "regulator" in the licensing or legal sense of the term"', instead it is more of a '"mediation service"'. The Liberal Democrat conference has just voted in favour of a 'radical overhaul' of the PCC on the grounds that "a regulator that works for the benefit of the press, rather than the public," is more than undesirable. Again the same question arises: regulator? Who said anything about that?

Mediation service or not, public support for the PCC is lacking. It's easy to see why some would think the PCC has failed - the expectations of the public simply didn't tally with what the PCC was able to deliver. Maybe that's because the PCC is a a self-regulatory body. 'Self-regulation' is a broad concept and the PCC itself was focused primarily upon settling disputes than providing an iron clad system of discipline for newspapers; therefore it's easy to accuse an organisation like the PCC of putting the interests of the industry first.

However, in this spiral of negativity, the advantages of a self-regulatory body like the PCC are being overlooked. Industry rules devised by industry members themselves will be more relevant than those devised by non-expert civil service employees and, as these rules will then appear more reasonable, the industry is more likely to obey them. Most crucially, self-regulation is a surefire means to prevent the state from gaining too much control over the media. To this end, politicans, lawyers and industry experts have been calling for the PCC to be given additional investigatory powers to transform it into the effective regulator it has the potential to be.

The Mensch case shows exactly how effective it can be at doing exactly what is says on the tin: dealing with complaints. Perhaps the area in which the PCC is most ineffective is not failing to stop one institution's unethical journalism, but actually telling the press, the public and politicians why it exists in the first place: to mediate. However, it seems that simply settling the quibbles of an MP is not enough to repair the lack of trust in the PCC and, whether through gaining additional powers or otherwise, it looks like the organisation might see some drastic changes in the near future.

Source: CFOM.org.uk, The Guardian (1), (2), Hold the Front Page, Journalism.co.uk (1), (2), New Left Project, The Press Complaints Commission,