PCC won’t pursue NUJ complaint about Johnston Press

The Press Complaints Commission will not take further a claim by the National Union of Journalists that journalists at Johnston Press were being ordered to compromise editorial standards and put accuracy at risk.

According to the minutes of the commissioners meeting in July the PCC decided further steps were not appropriate after Johnston Press ‘affirmed its commitment’to the press watchdog.

The National Union of Journalists had written to PCC in June claiming that the way the new Johnston Press Atex content management system has been introduced was leading to journalists breaking the Editors’ Code of Practice.

This followed a memo being dispatched to editors by Paul Bentham, managing director of South Yorkshire Newspapers, encouraging them to stop “the old practice of reading every story”.

Topics in this article : Journalism