The Press Complaints Commission will regulate newspapers’ online video content, its chairman Sir Christopher Meyer has said.
Meyer told BBC News 24’s Straight Talk programme that the press watchdog would regulate audiovisual material on newspaper websites as well as text, and described the move as a great step forward.
The PCC, which has a voluntary editors’ code of conduct, already regulates online editions of newspapers and has now persuaded its members to agree to the rule change.
Meyer told Straight Talk presenter Andrew Neil: “The basic situation has been for some time that we regulate what’s in print and we regulate the photo and the word on electronic versions of newspapers.
“And we have now persuaded the newspaper and magazine industry of the United Kingdom to agree also the principle of our regulating moving pictures and sound on newspaper’s websites.”
Presenter Andrew Neil asked: “But they’ll be bound by the same sort of rules as they are in the papers we pick up in the morning…”
Meyer confirmed they would be “exactly the same kind of rules”. He added the change was the first time that newspapers had voluntarily agreed to extend the PCC’s remit and that the commission would make an announcement in the next few weeks.
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