PCC Power Grab

The new chairman of the PCC, Baroness Buscombe, wants to throw a rope around the world of blog. Others have already picked up on this one, but it’s worth ridiculing it further in the hope that these control freaks get the message that the proposal won’t be that easy. Oh, and AJ points out, Buscombe is a Tory, so we can expect the control freakery to continue apace with “call me Dave’s” blue Labour should he win the baton from GB in the spring.

Baroness Buscombe, the new chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, has ambitions for her organisation that go beyond the traditional newspaper companies.

She wants to examine the possibility that the PCC’s role should be extended to cover the blogosphere… Do readers of such sites, and people mentioned on them, deserve the same rights of redress that the PCC offers in respect of newspapers and their sites?

Bloggers, like newspaper journalists, are bound by the laws of libel. Unlike journalists, our output is provided free of charge and is mostly comment rather than breaking news – so, no, our readers do not have the same rights of redress provided by the PCC. If you don’t like what I write, go elsewhere. Anyone mentioned is covered by libel laws and can ask for erroneos comment to be removed. Given the nature of blogs, redress in this regard is simple and any reasonable blogger would respond appropriately. Indeed, I have done so in the past.

“Some of the bloggers are now creating their own ecosystems which are quite sophisticated,” Baroness Buscombe told me. “Is the reader of those blogs assuming that it’s news, and is [the blogosphere] the new newspapers? It’s a very interesting area and quite challenging.”

And? So? What business is this of the PCC? Indeed, perhaps the PCC should concentrate on its core role of regulating the output if ill-informed and all too frequently toxic output of journalists who make money from destroying peoples’ lives. The PCC has proved so far that it is singularly useless in that role.

She said that after a review of the governance structures of the PCC, she would want the organisation to “consider” whether it should seek to extend its remit to the blogosphere, a process that would involve discussion with the press industry, the public and bloggers (who would presumably have to volunteer to come beneath the PCC’s umbrella).

Consider away. Many of us host offshore. Some of us live outside the UK, so the practical implications would make this somewhat interesting to enforce. As for the volunteers, well, I anticipate a very small queue. I won’t be in it.

Blogging, with its tradition of being free and unregulated, sees itself as very different. But is it really?

Sigh… Yes.

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Update: DK links to a letter of response by Unity over at Liberal Conspiracy.