Press Self Regulation Fails Time to Disband the PPC

Earlier today Mark Thompson wrote what is the point of the Press Complaints Commission in light of their ruling on Jan Moir and her Stephen Gately piece which lack cajones? Well now his view and mine are both being backed up by Peter Tatchell he says:

"The Press Complaints Commission should be disbanded. By failing to uphold its own standards and enforce its own Code of Practice, the PCC has demonstrated that it is unwilling, unable and unfit to regulate newspapers. We need a new press regulator with principles and teeth.

"Jan Moir's commentary on the death of Stephen Gately was factually inaccurate on two points. His death was not unnatural or lonely, yet the PCC has rejected a complaint concerning this inaccuracy by Stephen's civil partner, Andrew Cowles."

As I argued earlier the case for homophobia was the hardest of the three main clauses that the PCC may have had to judge on. Surely the timing of the article showed a lack of sensitivity to those close to the singer, the PPC merely said that the timing was "in questionable taste". But surely the factual accuracy should have been upheld more than anything else.

The PCC acknowledged that Jan Moir mentioned the coroners reports, that right the one that said he died of natural causes, to be precise Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome (SADS). The whole push of her article was to use unfounded, homophobic stereotypes to prove that is was "not natural".

Of course as Millennium Elephant points out the PCC is paid from by the people it regulates. Why? We have independent bodies to regulate almost everything else. This decision to even ignore the blatant things like accuracy in the face of opinion writing shows what a failure the self regulation of the press, by the press is. It really only serves to help the press.

As Dave Page wrote on today's Lib Dem Voice:

"Had Moir’s comments been made in the average workplace to a colleague who had complained, would she have been let off the hook?"

I think we all know what we hope the answer to that question would be. So in one workplace where such comments only affect a few to another where it clearly affects 25,000 who bothered to speak up, yet no action is taken.

As the PCC clearly have no cajones, there is nothing to really cut off apart from their ability to pass judgement on their own. Let's set up an independent body, with some clear standards (the current ones work for starters but could do with strengthening and broadening in some areas). Today they failed, show them the door and get somebody in that will actually do the job that is required.

READ ALSO: Of course not all Grauniad opinion is of hte abolish variety. Jonathan Heawood poses the opposite stand point. Of course I still say freedom of speech is one thing but being allowed to propagate deliberate falsehood, even in an opinion piece, is quite another.

The PCC Chickens Out Over Jan Moir Article

So the Press Complaints Commission PCC have reached their verdict on Jan Moir's piece after Stephen Gately's death, the timing of which they said was "in questionable taste". They said:

"It would not be proportionate to rule against the columnist's right to offer freely expressed views about something that was the focus of public attention."

They had also passed it on to the Crown Prosecution Service who ruled that it was not unlawful:

"In December 2009, the Metropolitan Police passed the article and statements from two complainants to the Crown Prosecution Service to determine whether or not any crime had been committed through publication of that article.

"Having considered that material I have decided that there is insufficient evidence that any offence has been committed.

"In coming to this conclusion I have paid particular attention to Article 10 of the Human Rights Act which protects individuals' freedom of expression. It is an established legal principle that this freedom applies equally to information and ideas that are favourably received as to those which offend, shock and disturb.

"Though the complainants and many others found this article offensive, this does not make its publication unlawful."

So if I'm reading the CPS right the government legislation against incitement to racial or homophobic incitement is null and void next to Article 1o of the Human Rights Act. So too it would seem are the laws of liable, they were suppositions in Jan Moir's original article which she presented as fact.

On her saying that the singers death was not "natural" the PCC said that while this was controversial and speculative, "could not be established as accurate or otherwise". But surely the point was that on that particular Friday only days after the incident a newspaper columnist with no medical or forensic training or access to the corpse would be in a far less likely place to know what was accurate than family or medical professionals. She actually dismissed the comments of these to give her own slant on things, saying is was factual. The thing that could not have been established was what Jan Moir was saying on that point, so the PCC chickened out on the one point that was open to censure on accuracy grounds rather than opinion to incite hatred.

The PCC said that there was a fine line to be drawn "between critical innuendo which, though perhaps distasteful, was permissible in a free society – and discriminatory description of individuals, and the code was designed to constrain the latter rather than the former". The problem is as Sara Bedford pointed out yesterday this is not an isolated incident with the Daily Fail.

Almost every story that features a gay man leads to some sort of stereotyping and discriminatory description of lifestyle. There is always some slur in the way they put the story across. The latter is prevalent within that particular publication. The problem is that they spread it around and only individual stories can be raised at a time rather than the whole library of unfounded innuendo that they splurge out over and over and over again.

So while the PCC keep saying they cannot condemn one individuals freedom of speech the whole ethos of the paper is slanted in a particular way which does discriminate. Unfortunately the Code is also incapable of dealing with the largess of such views across an entire publication.

UPDATE: Reading the PPC's full findings I was particularly interested to see what it had to say about the cause of death SADS (Sudden Arrhythmia Death Syndrome) which Moir dismissed so fully as "not natural".

"It was clearly the columnist's opinion that "healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again". This was a general and rhetorical point, based on the view of the prevailing health of young men. It admittedly did not take into account the possibility of SADS or similar, but the Commission did not consider that it could be read to be an authoritative and exhaustive statement of medical fact. Equally, the Commission was fully aware of the widespread objection to the reference to Mr Gately's death as not being "natural". This was undoubtedly a highly provocative claim which was open to interpretation, and many people had considered this to be distasteful and inaccurate. It was a claim, nonetheless, that could not be established as accurate or otherwise. The article had set out the official cause of death so it was clear that this was a broad opinion rather than a factual statement."

So Andrew Cowles complaining thus about Moir saying the family were distorting facts:

"Although a post mortem had been conducted and the results published - confirming that Mr Gately had died from natural causes through an acute pulmonary oedema, believed to have been brought on by a heart attack - the thrust of the article was that this was questionable ("something is terribly wrong with the way this incident has been shaped and spun"; "the sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath")."

Appears to have no protection under the law. Journalists Columnists are at will under freedom of speech under the Human Rights act to deny facts, accuse the family who want these facts out to be liars, or indeed trying to obscure something. This is twisted and the PCC really has failed horrifically to defend factual representation today. The claim that Moir quoted the cause of death, she did but then only to rebuke it as nonsense. How that can pass accuracy under the PCC code dumbfounds me.

Read Also Andrew takes a look at one of the other clauses in depth. While a rather fluffy elephant renames the PCC the Press Cover-Up Cronies.

Gately 'Connected' Party Complaint Made About Jan Moir

Remember way back in October when Jan Moir wrote her poisonous piece on the eve of Stephen Gately's funeral in the Daily Fail.

Many of us ordinary people, 25,000 to be almost exact, took to our keyboards and wrote to the Press Complaints Commission and even though they did make a special case about it on their website. They wrote back to us saying there was nothing they could do under the code as none of us were 'directly' affected by the words on Jan Moir's hard drive.

Well today that has changed. Andrew Cowles was directly affected by the words that Ms Moir wrote has launched a formal complaint. Mr Cowles was Gately's civil partner and was present in the appartment when the man he loved died. Stephen Abell of the PPC.

"We're now investigating this complaint which we are taking forward formally and we'll consider it together with the 25,000 complaints as soon as possible.

"We'll be writing to the newspaper with this latest complaint from Andrew Cowles."

Obviously at the time of the article Cowles and the Gately family had other things they needed to do in grieving for their loved one. But now after a time of mourning Cowles is looking at the allegations that Moir made about a gay lifestyle in general but his and Stephen's in particular and seeking to set the record straight.

More people complained about that Jan Moir's than any single article in history and her unpology a week later did nothing to correct her mistake. Now the PCC are looking at how this has affected Andrew Cowles along with the other 25,000 of us who complained.

Even the PCC are Making Jan Moir a Special Case

Of course Jan Moir's article would have to be published on a day I was exceedingly busy then out having a good time. Indeed by the time I got home this evening the article appears to have been pulled from the Daily Fail website and the Press Complaints Commission (PPC) actually on their page about making a complaint saying, 'if you want to make a complaint about Jan Moir's article click here'. Apparently their website was down earlier so this may be to avoid too much overload on one server.

If you really want to read the full contents Cardiff Blogger has the full sorry piece with his commentary here.

I read it and logged a complaint with the PCC under three of their clauses. Accuracy, Intrusion into grief or shock and Discrimination. As the last of this has been widely covered elsewhere in the blogosphere I'm going to blog about the later.

Jan Moir writes:

"The sugar coating on this fatality is so saccharine-thick that it obscures whatever bitter truth lies beneath. Healthy and fit 33-year-old men do not just climb into their pyjamas and go to sleep on the sofa, never to wake up again."

Well I'm sorry they do. At only a few years older I thought I may have been facing something like that. My case was even more bizarre, I'd just left the gym, I may not have been in the peak of fitness but I still was pretty fit, but I experienced my first diagnosed cardiac episode, although I may have been having them for 20 years before. So yes I may very well have been one such person, so I question you accuracy.

When I was 16, one of our school friends did go to sleep and never wake up the day before our second Maths O'Level paper. So the whole school knew and the was there together to hear the news. The whole year was in shock at after the first hour when people could leave the hall, over half of my year did. Those of us who stayed couldn't settle for a good five minutes. At my 10 year reunion we marked the passing of 5 of our year, that is out of 200 or so pupils, as well as the one above 3 others were of natural causes. We had only just started to turn 28 never mind 33. Jan Moir must really have led a charmed life if she has never encountered someone young who has just passed away in their sleep.

As for her total disregard of the official cause of death, well as others have covered that heavily as well what more need I say. Her insinuations that there is something dark and sinister behind everything would mean many gay men should never again offer a bed or sofa for the night to a friend who has missed their last train, or can't be bothered waiting for the long queue at the taxi rank*. But then it appears that Ms Moir doesn't think that a member of Boyzone could be overflowing with the milk of human kindness, let alone the rest of the gay community.

The intrusion into grief and shock is maybe the hardest of the three clauses to apply. In the code it states:

5 Intrusion into grief or shock

i) In cases involving personal grief and shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings.

*ii) When reporting suicide, care should be taken to avoid excessive detail about the method used.

Now of course, Ms Moir seems to correlate the tragic death of Stephen Gately with the death of Kevin McGee the former partner of Matt Lucas. So maybe she does think it was a suicide despite all evidence to the contrary. So she does manage to avoid using excessive detail about the method used, firstly as there wasn't any, but more to the point she just makes it up.

The more solid ground of course it point about publication being handled sensitively. There is no way on this earth that this piece in the Daily Fail this morning cold possibly have been considered sensitive. To also publish on the eve of the funeral on the day that the body is returned to Ireland merely heightens the crassness of the piece as well as the timing.

Stuart Sharpe told me there was no point me blogging about this as I was heading out. Then when I got back that there was nothing new under the sun to add. I'm not sure if I have gotten a new take on this ridiculous woman's poisoned pen piece, but it certainly is mine and avoided too much of the obvious.

* You have been warned if you see the two of us out over the next few weekends lads. No can do, Ms Moir might get the wrong idea, the canasta game is just not going to happen.