03/03/2011

What's this? The tabloids taking PCC rulings even further than they're asked?

A couple of weeks ago, the Daily Quail and some other bloggers were sent a letter by the Daily Mail, requesting the removal of some material from their blogs.

It says:
We have received a complaint from the Press Complaints Commission about this article and have as a result removed it from our websites and agreed to request that you do the same.
Hmm. Would the PCC really do that?


Today, Liberal Conspiracy includes the news that the PCC really has been requesting that newspapers contact others to get them to remove content based on their ruling.  But this isn't necessarily a bad thing on the part of the PCC.

Stories get churned all the damn time in the press, so it's a good idea that the PCC should try to get outlets and maybe bloggers that have churned an article from another paper (or had one of their stories churned) to make sure the offending story is removed.  It might even be a good idea that the cost of this is passed on to the papers who have been on the receiving end of a PCC ruling.

However, it looks like the Mail in this case has kind of creatively interpreted the request. The PCC ruling Liberal Conspiracy links to requests only:
the submission of informal requests for removal on behalf of the complainant to other news sources that had re-published the original piece
Does that really mean, 'contact everyone who pointed out the article was bullshit now we've decided it was in fact bullshit and tell them we've asked you to get them specifically to delete where they point that out'?  Does it really?

1 comment:

Mr Larrington said...

Arkell vs. Pressdram time...