You reported last week that Peter Bradley MP’s bill to introduce a
legally enforceable right of reply to newspaper inaccuracies was
“doomed to failure”.
How right you were. But it was hardly
surprising. To support his anti- PCC case he peddled hugely misleading
statements about the PCC’s record, and relied on a feeble piece of
research from the strange charity “Mediawise”, which the government
minister responding to the bill dismissed as “based on a very small,
and not necessarily representative, sample”.
Bradley ignored the
true position: that, of the 333 legitimate accuracy complaints that the
PCC investigated last year, we negotiated offers to put the matter
right in all but six cases.
The rest were upheld.
Related
That is
some record – and totally at odds with the characterisation of the PCC
promoted by Bradley. No wonder he and his supporters – the NUJ and
Mediawise – could only persuade six other MPs to vote for this
unnecessary piece of legislation when it was put to the vote last
Friday.
Tim Toulmin Director Press Complaints Commission
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