Abell bids farewell to the PCC with a few pointers to the future

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/greenslade/2012/mar/01/stephen-abell-pcc

Version 0 of 1.

Stephen Abell, the final director of the dying Press Complaints Commission, departed yesterday. But, as he told me in a valedictory interview, published in yesterday's London Evening Standard, he has reasons to be cheerful.

He believes that in the course of its 21-year existence the PCC's complaints-handling role has become enormously sophisticated. And it is viewed as a template form of press self-regulation in other countries around the world.

Then again, no other country has the kind of competitive national press we have in Britain. And it is the behaviour of national newspapers that has been largely responsible for its demise.

During our talk, I noted that American journalists regard the whole business of press regulation as anathema.

And he made an interesting response, one of a couple of points I didn't have the space to include in the Standard article.

"US newspapers have internalised regulation," he said. "All of them have internal self-regulatory systems in which their journalists work to a code of ethics."

He also said that American papers are not "culturally central to their country as here in Britain. Our papers are so central they even identifiable with Britishness."

In a development I had not picked up on previously, he said that the Huffington Post UK - the London-based outlet of the US online paper - was a member of the PCC.

And lo and behold, I now see that's exactly what HuffPo UK's editor-in-chief, Carla Buzasi, told the Leveson inquiry (well, I can't remember every detail of so much evidence).

Anyway, the point is that an American media outlet has joined the system of self-regulation of its own volition.

Finally, Abell indicated the direction he expects a new body - call it PCC II - to take, with a complaints arm based around the commission's current role and a standards arm, with a regulatory function.

He wasn't overly specific, so what follows is my filling in some gaps in the clues he gave.

This standards arm would have the capability to deal with ethical offenders. It would require publishers to sort out misbehaving staff. It also would audit internal practices at papers and magazines. It may even report on an annual basis to the Commons media select committee.

It would, however, be free from both state control and industry control because its members would agree be contracted individually to the body itself.

The chairman, and possibly a deputy chairman, would be selected by the Appointments Commission.

All of this would, presumably, obviate the need for the Press Board of Finance, PressBof, about which there appears to be a perception - without any clear evidence - of discreet string-pulling.

I just want to repeat Abell's remark with which I concluded my Standard article:

"What type of regulator should an industry devoted to freedom of expression have? I'm not sure that the industry needs an all-powerful regulator."