Principle 10.2 of the Press Council’s Code of Practice provides “The content of this Code will be reviewed at regular intervals”. A piece by Carol Coulter in today’s Irish Times reports on the first revisions of the Code since the establishment of the Press Council:

Changes made to Press Council’s code of practice

A number of changes have been made to the Press Council code of practice in the interests of clarity, according to its latest newsletter.

The changes include separating Principle 2, dealing with comment, into two, stating that newspapers and periodicals are entitled to advocate strongly their own views, but also stating that comment, conjecture, rumour and unconfirmed reports shall not be reported as if they were facts.

They also include changes to Principle 8, which had been entitled “Incitement to Hatred”, and which included both incitement to hatred and publication of material thought to be “likely to cause grave offence”. It was considered potentially misleading to single out the most extreme breach of the code as a title for this principle, and accordingly the title has been amended to “Prejudice”. …

The revised Code of Practice is available here.