Scant press coverage for PCC chair Buscombe’s libel ‘regret’

The rather embarrassing news that Press Complaints Commission chair Peta Buscombe has been forced to make her own statement of “regret” after potentially libelling a lawyer has received scant coverage from the industry she regulates.

Only The Independent and The Guardian appear to have covered it ( Press Gazette was first with the story).

News editors may well be bored with the ever more complex News of the World phone-hacking saga.

But this silence will provide fuel for those who argue that newspapers have too cosy a relationship with their regulator.

Many regional press editors have a rule that if a member of their staff commits some criminal misdemeanour (say drink-driving) they make sure it gets covered – preferably on the front page. Such a rule better enables them to deal with the many members of the public who phone up pleading that their own embarrassments are kept out of the press.

I’d venture that Buscombe’s more minor legal slip-up falls into a similar category.