McNae's Essential Law for Journalists: Part 1: Chapter 2: Press regulation

Question 1

Are there state controls on the press in the UK?

Answer 1

There are no state controls in the UK on who can own or run newspapers, magazines, or any kind of news website.

Question 2

What happened to the Press Complaints Commission?

Answer 2

In 2011, the Press Complaints Commission was discredited because it failed to realise or investigate the extent of phone-hacking by journalists at the News of the World.

Question 3

What was created as a result of the Leveson Report?

Answer 3

The publication of the Leveson Report in 2012 led most of the UK’s major newspaper and magazine groups to establish, be funded and be bound by the Independent Press Standards Organisation. It replaced the PCC in 2014.

Question 4

What other press regulator is in the Charter system?

Answer 4

Impress.

Question 5

What is the scope of the Editors’ Code?

Answer 5

The Editors’ Code has 16 clauses. These set out ethical standards on a range of issues including accuracy, privacy, children’s welfare, preventing harrassment and intrusion into grief or shock, and banning the use of excessive detail in coverage of suicides, as well as governing how journalists should make inquiries at hospitals and their use of undercover tactics
involving secret filming, subterfuge misrepresentation.

Question 6

What does the Code say the public interest include?

Answer 6

• detecting or exposing crime.
• protecting public health or safety.
• protecting the public from being misled by an action or statement of an individual or organisation.
• disclosing a marriage of justice.

Question 7

Recap of major points

Answer 7

• The Editors’ Code sets standards for journalists working for the UK’s largest publishers of newspapers, magazines and websites.
• It has clauses to uphold accuracy.
• It permits undercover reporting, but only if justified by special public interest factors.
• The Independent Press Standards Organisation, which adjudicates on complaints against editors and journalists in its member press groups, publishes adverse and some other adjudications.
• Impress, a recognised but smaller regulator, has it own code and it too publishes adjudications.