´óÏó´«Ã½

I made a complaint to the PCC regarding the reporting of my son's inquest in 2007 in a local newspaper which had wide circulation. It was handled promptly and with sensitivity by the PCC. A positive outcome was achieved- the Editor issued an apology, withdrew the inaccurate article, allowed me to write another one whilst withdrawing it from the newspaper's website. This meant that the emotional impact on my family was reduced in part thanks to the intervention of the PCC.

A modest proposal:

When the PCC upholds a complaint and if the complainant wishes to take legal action against the newspaper, the PCC should be required to take independent legal advice on whether such action would be likely to succeed. If that advice is that such a case would be more likely to succeed than not, the PCC should be required to fully fund the action.

If PCC funded legal action succeeded, the PCC would recover its costs fully from the miscreant newspaper. The costs of cases that did not succeed would be aggregated and charged to all newspapers according to a formula that took account of the number of PCC complaints upheld against that newspaper in the previous period.

This approach would give the PCC teeth and would also address the access to justice issues without putting costs on the taxpayer.

This comment was removed because the moderators found it broke the house rules. Explain.

Sorry - that last comment was not yet fully developed. The guttersnipes of the tabloid press should be given a damn hard time - to me being an actor is a job - just a job - yes if you go to "The Ivy" restaurant then you expect to get bothered by the slime of the paparazzi photographers - and I agree with Hugh Grant that The Daily Mirror was once to me - at least the paper/print equivalent of an educated, well read member of the working class, or lower middle class, like Mark Steele or Mark Thomas - these are the type of men I would enjoy a good evening of witty, incisive, intelligent banter - but also, The Daily Mirror as now gone the way of the Sun and the daily sport - may God curse this country and its so called journalists!!

You cannot put the slime buckets that make up the 'mainstream press' in the same space as journalists fighting for their rights to bring to light wrong doing and corruption, as journalists try to do in Libya, Syria, a Zimbabwe, or even Russia.

NO ONE WOULD MISS A TABLOID PRESS JOURNALIST IF THEY ALL DISAPPEARED TOMORROW!! THEY DO NOT SHED LIGHT ON A DIFFICULT SITUATION OR COMPLEX POLITICAL ISSUE - BUT THROW MORE FUEL ON THE FIRE OF IGNORANCE, PREJUDICE, AND ANTI-INTELLECTUALISM FOR THE SAKE OF A SENSATIONALIST "STORY", 'SOLD' TO THE LEAST EDUCATED AND INARTICULATE OF OUR CITIZENS,OR TO THE DARKER 'GRUMPIER' SIDE OF AN AGEING SOCIETY.

Who the hell are the pontificators of the north London chattering classes to 'congratulate' the so-called 'Arab Spring' - if this sort of rubbish is what could arise from a so called democratic society? Just like the people of Liverpool, I hope that the tabloid press will do a story about a wealthy part of the south east of England, that will also lead to that area refusing to buy copies of the sun, the daily sport, the daily express, the daily mail, and alas, also, the daily mirror.

In light of what is going in the middle east, this country has to be forever vigilant of its democratic ideals, lest you lose them all, because there may well be a government in the near future who will have to bring in stringent privacy laws. This may 'protect the privacy' of well known/famous footballers, actors, and so forth, but it will also mean that genuine issues of public interest to do with the finance, health, freedom of speech, social cohesion, food, water or civil defence of the UK, may never be fully investigated, and the leaders in those areas, never fully held to account, and in some cases, imprisoned for their decisions.

When someone is 'famous' for something public, that is the only thing that they should be judged on. Not who they may sleep with, unless it is to do with the exploitation of vulnerable adults or children, either in this country or abroad.

Believe me, even when I am abroad, whether in Europe or Africa, the last thing I care about is the rubbish that shamefully 'passes for [hard] news and current affairs' in this country.

To me this sort of focus on celebrity, is the bread and circuses of a failing, dying empire, just as it may have been in the time of ancient Rome. This is a very disturbing 'distraction' from real concerns, about this country ageing, losing its influence and respect in the wider world, and no longer a country that develops, designs and makes stuff - but consumes like a bloated Nero or Caligula.

Ah well, as the bulldog and the bald eagle of the 'western powers' moults, and sheds its feathers, respectively, the tiger and the magnificent dragon, of the growing 'eastern powers' are on the rise - just as the sun sets in the west and rises in the east.......

Of course, Stephen Abell is right, the PCC isn't toothless. It has great big teeth. The trouble is that it's a big 'ole pussycat when it comes to using them against the papers. I don't think it's so much a political thing, as simply not wanting the hassle of investigating a complaint, when cuts must affect them as much any organisation, so they make plaintiffs jump through hoops to justify their cases.

When I complained to the commission about my local paper including my whole address below a letter I'd written, on their online letters, and not editing it despite my request, that was handled quickly too. But when I complained a few years later that the paper had misrepresented a story that appeared online on a Saturday, about police recruitment, implying that ethnic minority candidates were the principle beneficiaries of a policy which 'de-selected' white male applicants, when actually female applicants were, and ignored my suggestion that they correct this before it went into print on the Monday, the PCC assigned [Personal details removed by Moderator] to examine my case, who kept emailing me with ever more trifling questions, in ever more flowery terms ('I would like to ask, if I may...'). Finally, I asked the worker who had handled my previous case if the PCC could either put someone else on the case or put it to the commissionaires as it was. Big mistake. The final verdict was that it didn't quite qualify as a valid complaint, because female applicants were mentioned further down the article (the headline was about 'racial targets').

The judgement contained factual errors, though, as had [Personal details removed by Moderator] summations, so I asked to see what had actually been submitted to the commission on my behalf. This resulted in an exchange of emails between [Personal details removed by Moderator]and myself, with the DPA being invoked, and the only result was a description of the case, *without* the details of the submission.

No ,I don't put a lot of faith in the PCC.

Seriously, do all comments 'await moderation', or is it just mine? That isn't what 'reactively-moderated' means, is it?

Oh, I see now. When my first attempt to post my comment failed, I assumed it was because my connection had failed as I was posting. When I got the connection back up, I tried again. I see from my emails that the first posting was 'edited' because it contained Stephen Abell's email address (which should be public knowledge), but that the second was 'removed', and on the blog the first post, which should only have been 'edited', isn't there either. I assume therefore that you did permit the first post originally, in 'edited' form, but decided to remove it after my second post. That is your choice, but as with another post of mine which survived the moderation process once only to be modded out again, you should have stuck to your originally decision with that first post, and not been swayed by something completely separate. Unfortunately, this is the kind of faulty reasoning that has come to characterise moderation policy at the ´óÏó´«Ã½, and will drag the organisation down.

BTW, my last comment apparently encountered a 'problem' which you're doing your 'best to fix' (why does that sound familiar?). If the comment above appears twice, just don't blame me (again).

I was reported about in the Daily Mail three years ago. I’d been the victim of a sex attack in 1987 (it was anal/digital penetration + biting and the person was charged with indecent assault, pleaded not guilty, was tried and convicted and went to prison). That was before the laws for privacy for rape victims. I carried on working in the same place and over the years had a lot of nasty gossip. I complained to an employment tribunal. The matter was settled before the hearing. The Daily Mail reported it in a nasty way (in 2008) and used my name and picture and ‘door-stepped’ me. I think victims of such crimes should still be protected with the anonymity law even if their case happened before it came in. I don’t think it was justified to make me a matter of public scrutiny. I think my experience makes me an interested party and I don’t have a lot of confidence in what’s going on.
Further details:
I’m only contacting you about this because I haven’t seen any other comments that deal with the same kind of issue. When the Daily Mail reported it, if you Googled my name, porn sites came up. I’m not a celebrity, so there are no compensating factors. It had a very bad effect on me and I’ve had to change my name. I complained to the Press Complaints Commission and the person I spoke to was kind, but I also felt some pressure to agree matters informally. In my understanding, it could have gone to adjudication but I was told some of the people were in favour and some against, and if I was found against there’d be even more comments about it, which I didn’t want.
The Mail removed the article but a lot of internet sites had picked up on it and there was a lot of stuff on there about me until April this year - I had been checking intermittently, and getting upset, and eventually contacted the Press Complaints Commission again and it contacted the sites for me and they have now been removed. So I have both good and bad feelings about it, but am also left with a lot of bad feelings about the Daily Mail.

I have tried several comments since the start of all this some are still posting...... when will the Hamster driving the wheel die?
Will we be told by the Almighty E.M. the true number of comments that were asttempted, by the non-famous, tax-paying, non -tweeting Public?
•Lowly members of the listeners (licence paying,tax-paying, forbidden to communicate) are desperate to know what their numbers are?
Was their sentence for more than 30 years?
Would they be treated like the joker on twitter who racked up thousands of comments who thinks he may be safe on the 'I SPARTICUS' principle.
• Privacy has been presserved against press intrusion by every instigator of every ex parte injunction. How many have their been?
•How can an inquiry be held if the instigators do not patially lift the injunctions for statistical reasons?

We are constantly told that an ageing population presents problems.
Did the judges take this increasing longevity into consideration when granting injunctions.
Would it be an automatic indictment for contempt of court if a taxpayer entered her gagging injunction for the Guiness Book of Records on grounds of longevity?