Political

Small step forward on press corrections as press code altered

A press release from the Editors’ Code of Practice Committee (the body that draws up the code with the Press Complaints Commission implements) brings the news:

From next year, corrections involving the Press Complaints Commission – which oversees press self regulation in the UK – will be agreed with the PCC in advance, under new rules agreed by the Editors’ Code Committee, which reviews the Code…

Code Committee secretary Ian Beales said: “This amendment is designed to help kill the myth that newspapers and magazines routinely bury corrections. Research conducted by the PCC has shown this to be untrue – nearly 85% of PCC-negotiated corrections and apologies appear no further back than the original transgression, or in a designated corrections column.”

A small, but welcome, step even if the use of “nearly 85%” as if it were a good figure shows that there is still much which could and should be improved – and that’s despite the figure not catching cases such as a page 1 error corrected in a page 23 corrections column.

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