The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) upheld a complaint against the Sunday World over two articles which exposed a shocking new sex craze (known as bukkake) which was taking place in Ulster.

The complainant was the organiser of sex events. He was concerned that the newspaper had used subterfuge as part of its investigation into his (legal) business activities: the newspaper's coverage included stills from footage shot using a hidden camera by an undercover reporter who had attended part of one event. He also said that various claims made by the newspaper (including that he charged an entrance fee for people to attend the events and made big money from them) were untrue.

The newspaper argued that the coverage could be justified in the public interest: a senior medical officer had claimed that the participants were at risk from sexually-transmitted infections. The complainant disagreed, and said there were no public health issues.

In its ruling, the Commission made clear that, although the newspaper was entitled to report on, and comment robustly about, the sex industry in its local area, it was not free to pursue any journalistic approach to do so. The filming and the published images constituted a serious intrusion which required a high level of public interest to justify. In the Commission's view, the defence put forward by the newspaper did not justify the use of the hidden camera: the newspaper could have exposed the existence of bukkake parties (and any attendant health risks) without undercover footage of this type.

The Commission also found a breach of Clause 1 on the basis that the newspaper had not provided sufficient evidence to support its assertion that the complainant was making big money from bukkake events; nor had it provided any evidence for two further claims related to the complainant and his wife.

PCC Director Stephen Abell commented: The Editors' Code of Practice enforced by the PCC contains strong provisions to protect people's privacy, especially in regard to the use of images taken in private places. The Commission has always rightly set a high bar for the use of material from hidden cameras, and the newspaper's justification did not reach that level here.

Paul Smith v Hull Daily Mail

Paul Smith complained to the Press Complaints Commission that articles headlined Town website publisher's porn business, The sickening porn behind this man's veil of respectability and Town website: the sordid truth, published in the Hull Daily Mail on 4 March 2010, were inaccurate and misleading.

The complaint was upheld in part.

The articles reported that the complainant - who was responsible for publishing a local community website which had been promoted by the local council - had designed thousands of hardcore pornography websites (at one point giving the specific figure of 3,991 for sites he had designed) and owns the domain names to almost 4,000 sites. The complainant said that this was incorrect: he had only ever designed a hundred or so websites, including some adult sites, across a number of fields; and he had bought just over 100 domain names, nearly half of which were dormant.

The newspaper said that, at the time of its investigation, a web registration search showed that the complainant owned 3,991 domains under the name Smiths Media Solutions, the majority of which could be categorised as adult. Following publication of the articles, the relevant server was disconnected and it was unable to prove this figure conclusively. The precise claim was put to the complainant before publication: the complainant was unable to confirm the number of sites in which he was involved and did not deny the allegation.

PCC Decision: Upheld

The Commission accepted that there was a legitimate public interest in the newspaper examining the business activities of the complainant, given his role in publishing a local community website. However, such high-profile scrutiny carried with it the responsibility to be accurate.

While it was not in dispute that the complainant had designed some pornographic websites in the past - and owned a substantial number of domain names - the newspaper had not been able to corroborate the significant claims that the complainant had designed thousands of such sites (as many as 3,991) or owned the domain names to almost 4000 sites. These were crucial allegations and the newspaper should have been able to substantiate them fully (and been in a position to provide concrete evidence to the PCC).

Based on the available material, the Commission considered that readers would have been misled as to the scale of the complainant's involvement in adult websites. The result was a breach of Clause 1 of the Editors' Code.

Legal Adult Website Design

The complainant had raised a number of other points under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors' Code. These aspects of the complaint were not upheld.

The complainant said that he built websites for a living and had, in the past, designed pages for the adult industry (in addition to the gaming, finance, retail and pharmaceutical industries). The front page headline wrongly suggested that that he owned a porn business; this was not the case. In addition, the coverage misleadingly suggested that he was personally involved in the creation of pornographic content, rather than legitimately designing the layout for those sites. Finally, the coverage stated that that he had agreed to design a website for a newspaper journalist posing as an escort girl when, in fact, he had merely discussed her requirements.

The newspaper defended its coverage: its readers had a right to know about the activities of the complainant who was responsible for running a prominent local website which covered a range of community issues and had been supported by the local authorities. It had sought to obtain the complainant's comments on the allegations and his position had been published at length (together with positive comments from members of the community). The coverage made the nature of the complainant's involvement with pornographic websites clear, outlining that there was no suggestion that any of the websites contained illegal material. It was willing to publish a clarification on this point, which was rejected by the complainant.

The newspaper maintained that the complainant had agreed to build a website for the journalist posing as an escort girl and had quoted between £150 and £250 for doing so. It provided emails to support this position.

PCC Adjudication: Not Upheld

The Commission has consistently stated that headlines can only be fully understood in the context of an article when read as a whole. On this occasion, the article made plain to readers the level of the complainant's involvement with pornographic websites: he had designed websites that hosted legal adult content. It was clear that the complainant's role was as a designer, rather than a producer, of web content. He had also been quoted at length on the matter setting out his position. The nature of the complainant's discussions with the journalist posing as Sarah was also sufficiently clear, in the Commission's view. No breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) could be established on these points.

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) have just published their annual review of 2009.

Chairman Baroness Buscombe defended the PCC decision not to censure the Daily Mail over a Jan Moir story suggesting was nothing natural about the death of gay Boyzone singer Stephen Gately.

Gately died of natural causes at his holiday home on the island of Majorca in October last year.

Writing in the PCC's annual review, chairman Baroness Buscombe said it had been a difficult but important case that attracted 25,000 complaints: In the end, the commission considered that newspapers had the right to publish opinions that many might find unpalatable and offensive, and that it would not be proportionate, in this case, to rule against the free expression of the columnist's views on a subject that was the focus of intense public attention. This was a difficult decision to make but I believe we made the right one.

Parliament's Culture, Media and Sport select committee inquiry into press standards, privacy and libel, issued a report in February. It criticised some of the work of the PCC, singling out coverage of Madeleine McCann's disappearance in Portugal in 2007 as an example of a lack of teeth, and recommended increasing its powers.

However, Baroness Buscombe said: An upheld complaint is a serious outcome for any editor and puts down a marker for future press behaviour. The fact that breaches of the code can lead to public criticism means that editors have to consider the key ethical issues before publishing.

The total number of investigations initiated by the commission increased from 949 to 1,134 in 2009, with those that raised a possible breach of the editors' code of practice rising from 678 to 738.

The PCC ruled there had been a breach of the code in 129 cases, but in 111 of those remedial action by the publication was considered sufficient by the commission. Public censure was seen necessary in 18 cases, compared with 24 the previous year.

A woman complained to the Press Complaints Commission that an article headlined Wanted! The Epic Boobs girl!, published in the February 2010 edition of Loaded, intruded into her privacy. The complaint was not upheld.

The article featured a number of photographs of the complainant - who was said to have the best breasts on the block - taken from the internet and offered readers of the magazine a reward of £500 for assistance in encouraging her to do a photo shoot with it.

The complainant said that the article was intrusive: the magazine had published her name and the photographs, which had been uploaded to her Bebo site in December 2006 when she was 15 years old, had been taken from there and published without permission.

The publication of the article had caused her upset and embarrassment. The magazine said that that it had not taken the photographs from the complainant's Bebo site; rather, they were widely available on the internet. The complainant's photograph, for example, came up in the top three in a Google image search on the word boobs. At the time of complaint, there were 1,760,000 matches that related to her and 203,000 image matches of her as the Epic Boobs girl. Moreover, the complainant's name had been widely circulated and achieved over 100,000 Google hits, including over 8,000 photographs.

PCC Decision: Not Upheld

This case raised the important principle of the extent to which newspapers and magazines are able to make use of information that is already freely available online. The Commission has previously published decisions about the use of material uploaded to social networking sites, which have gone towards establishing a set of principles in this area.

However, this complaint was different: the magazine had not taken the material from the complainant's Bebo site; rather it had published a piece commenting on something that had widespread circulation online (having been taken from the Bebo page sometime ago by others) and was easily accessed by Google searches.

The Commission did not think it was possible for it to censure the magazine for commenting on material already given a wide circulation, and which had already been contextualised in the same specific way, by many others. Although the Code imposes higher standards on the press than exist for material on unregulated sites, the Commission felt that the images were so widely established for it to be untenable for the Commission to rule that it was wrong for the magazine to use them.

That said, the Commission wished to make clear that it had some sympathy with the complainant. The fact that she was fifteen-years-old when the images were originally taken - although she is an adult now - only added to the questionable tastefulness of the article. However, issues of taste and offence - and any question of the legality of the material - could not be ruled upon by the Commission, which was compelled to consider only the terms of the Editors' Code. The Code does include references to children but the complainant was not a child at the time the article was published.

The test, therefore, was whether the publication intruded into the complainant's privacy, and the Code required the Commission to have regard to the extent to which material is already in the public domain. In the Commission's view, the information, in the same form as published in the magazine, was widely available to such an extent that its republication did not raise a breach of the Code. The complaint was not upheld on that basis.

Spectator columnist Rod Liddle has become the first blogger to be censured by the Press Complaints Commission.

On the Spectator's website, Liddle wrote that the overwhelming majority of London's violent crime was carried out by young, Afro-Caribbean men. But the PCC ruled the former BBC Radio 4 Today editor's words breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of its code. It said the significant ruling showed publications' websites would be held to the same standards as print editions.

Liddle had written that the overwhelming majority of street crime, knife crime, gun crime, robbery and crimes of sexual violence in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community.

Although the Spectator had provided some evidence to back up Liddle's assertion, it had not been able to demonstrate that the 'overwhelming majority' of crime in all the stated categories had been carried out by members of the African-Caribbean community, Stephen Abell of the PCC said.

He added that the ruling was significant because it demonstrated that the PCC expects the same standards in newspaper and magazine blogs that it would expect in comment pieces that appear in print editions. There is plenty of room for robust opinions, views and commentary, but statements of fact must still be substantiated if and when they are disputed.

Offsite: Liddle censure a plus for serious newspaper and magazine websites

31st March 2010. See article from guardian.co.uk

Roy Greenslade writes in a well meaning blog:

A US reporter calls to ask whether I think the Rod Liddle censure by the Press Complaints Commission amounts to a constraint on the freedom of the press.

It is a natural consequence of America's journalists being appalled by the fact that we subject our newspapers and magazines to a self-regulatory regime that conflicts with their own constitutional right to freedom of expression.

So I reply that it is, of course, a constraint. But with freedom comes responsibility and it is surely irresponsible to present an opinion as a fact.

...

By showing that a magazine website cannot get away with publishing an inaccurate statement, the PCC has reinforced the public perception that British online journalists cannot put up any old rubbish online.

...Read the full article

But really...you only have to read about how many 'trafficked' sex workers there are arriving in Britain every year, or how many will be coming to the London Olympics, or how many children have been 'harmed' by watching post watershed programmes on iPlayer, to realise what a load of bullshit is published by major newspapers.

Tougher powers for the Press Complaints Commission and an end to the right of companies to sue for libel will be proposed next week in a long awaited report by MPs. But the much criticised press watchdog will escape calls for its abolition or for any form of state regulation of the press.

The PCC needs a radical shake-up to turn it into a body that is proactive, rigorous and is taken seriously by the public, the Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee will say. New powers could extend to halting the printing of a newspaper edition. John Whittingdale, the committee's chairman, says the watchdog should also have the ability to impose large fines.

The commission has come under fire this week for failing to uphold complaints about a Daily Mail article into the death last October of the Boyzone singer Stephen Gately. The column attracted 25,000 complaints from readers who perceived it to be homophobic. But the PCC said it should be slow to prevent columnists from expressing their views, however controversial they might be. It was a point of principle that newspapers could print views that might offend people, it said.

The complaint made to the PCC that the Daily Mail's column on Gately's death was inaccurate, intrusive and discriminatory was not upheld. Gately died at his holiday home on the island of Majorca. His civil partner Andrew Cowles made a complaint to the PCC about what had been written by the columnist Jan Moir. The PCC said that it could fully understand why Cowles and a record number of complainants were upset, but ruled that Moir's comments had not breached press guidelines.

In a second move that will please media organisations, the committee is expected to reject calls by Max Mosley, the former Formula One chief, for victims of media exposés to be notified in advance. There are fears that a requirement for prior notification will lead to judges imposing injunctions that would prevent many investigative stories going to print.

A third key recommendation expected in the report, to be published next week, is that businesses with more than ten employees will lose the right to sue for defamation.

The wideranging report by MPs will cover press standards, privacy, libel and libel tourism, super-injunctions and costs in defamation cases.