PCC sees record number of privacy complaints
25 Apr 07
Press complaints annual report highlights behind the scenes work to resolve disputes
The Press Complaints Commission successfully resolved a record number of complaints in 2006, with more complaints about the invasion of privacy than ever before, according to its annual report published yesterday.
The report reveals that the Commission successfully conciliated 20% more complaints last year than in 2005. The total number of complaints about UK newspapers and magazines and their websites fell slightly to 3,325.
Last year, the PCC received 231 complaints about invasions of a person’s privacy, the majority of these complaints relating to regional and local press, with 38.4% involving the national press.
Of the 231 privacy complaints, 96 were settled amicably following an agreement brokered by PCC officials, and proportionate offers of settlement (which were not accepted by the complainant) were made in a further 16.
The commission published 19 adjudications that concerned privacy in some way, upholding five complaints. The remainder were dispensed through private rulings from the commission, usually because they did not breach the Code.
Successful resolutions
There was a sharp rise in the number of resolved complaints in 2006. These are cases where members of the PCC’s full time staff successfully negotiate remedies to complaints to the express satisfaction of the complainant. There were 418 last year – a rise of 20% over 2005 and the highest total in the PCC’s history.
This means that 78% of cases that represented a possible breach of the Code were resolved. In a further 20% of such cases, the commission judged that offers not accepted by the complainant were proportionate and suitable. Only 2% of possible breaches were not met with a sufficient offer from the editor, and these complaints were all upheld.
The report also details some of the proactive work that the Commission undertakes that is often hidden from public view. This, it claims, puts into perspective the small number of privacy/confidence actions against newspapers that go to court, although the huge attention that legal actions attract may give people the wrong impression, encouraging them to think that there has been a shift away from the PCC to the courts.
This work includes the development of clear journalistic principles set out in a growing body of case law and the near-universal incorporation of the Code of Practice in journalists’ contracts, so making breaches of the code more serious for being a violation of the terms of employment.
The PCC’s remit has also been extended to include editorial audio-visual material and on newspaper and magazine websites.
Resisting statutory control
Stressing the sheer scale of the PCC’s work, the commission’s chairman, Sir Christopher Meyer, highlighted the “flexible” and “mature” characteristics of the self-regulatory system administered by the PCC, and the “practical and common-sense results” it is able to deliver.
But Sir Christopher also expressed sympathy with those who feel that freedom of expression is increasingly under threat from a number of quarters. “The threat is real”, he said. “If the trend continues, there will be inevitably further calls for the freedom of the press to be entrenched in a way similar to the First Amendment of the US constitution.”
In the report, he adds: “For reasons both practical and of principle, I have always been opposed to a statutory privacy law. The revolution in the news media makes the idea even more impractical and objectionable.
“In a digital age, where anyone can be a publisher and speak to the UK from websites hosted in faraway jurisdictions, a privacy law or, say, a statutory press council, would have insurmountable difficulties in trying to restrain information.
“The PCC system works because information is voluntarily withheld by those in the regulated industry. That would not be the case if the restrictions were imposed. Those in receipt of true but intrusive information could easily undermine the rules by passing it to bloggers’ sites or foreign news media. The result would be less protection for people.”