Graham Linehan, the writer of Father Ted and The IT Crowd, has recently criticised The Scottish Sunday Express for a disgusting article they ran over The Dunblane Tragedy, which they today apologised for. His entire post on the subject is here but this point is especially true:
The press likes us to believe they’re a properly regulated body, but they’re anything but. First of all, The PCC seems to be a completely toothless organisation by design. It is made up of representatives of the major publishers, who are obviously not inclined to be too hard on themselves. Also, unlike Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority, who have easy-to-use complaint forms on their websites, the PCC don’t even accept third party complaints – in other words, unless you are the person named in a printed article, they’re not interested in hearing your opinion. So when faced with an affront to our humanity (which is what I believe this Express story is), there is no official channel for us to register our anger. That’s right – if you are offended by something on TV, Radio or in an advert, you can complain; if you’re offended by something in the print press…well, you’re just going to have to walk it off, because literally no-one wants to know.
In one of my theory classes at uni a few weeks back we were looking at the PCC and I agree that as an organisation it is highly flawed in terms of walking off reader complaints. It is certainly less effective than an organisation like Ofcom.
