Perhaps stung by the criticism of its docile passivity in the face of the Goodman affair, the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) in the UK has this week come to life, swinging into acting with at least three very important developments, covered in this post and the next two.

The first is a direct result of the fallout from the royal phone-tapping affair. This week’s Media Guardian reports that the

PCC plans to write to every newspaper and magazine editor to ask what controls they have in place to prevent the sort of “intrusive fishing expeditions” undertaken by Goodman and widely speculated to have become common practice among some Sunday tabloid journalists. It will then publish its conclusions, with possible options believed to include new best-practice guidelines and the setting up of new training courses to make journalists more aware of the code and the law.

This is very welcome, but there is more than a whiff of stable doors and bolting horses about it. …

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As the Defamation Bill, 2006 brings an Irish Press Council ever closer, Owen Gibson writes in today’s Media Guardian that the United Kingdom’s Press Complaints Commission is again coming under scrutiny. Last week, News of the World journalist Clive Goodman was sentenced to four months in prison for unlawfully accessing the Prince of Wales’s voicemail; and Andy Coulson, the newspaper’s editor, resigned. As Gibson writes:

many in the industry were wondering whether the repercussions would stop there or if it would prove a watershed moment for press regulation in the UK. The pressure is mounting on the Press Complaints Commission to find out whether the actions of Goodman and his private investigator accomplice, who had a six-figure annual “research” contract with the News of the World, were merely the tip of the iceberg.

More to the point, for an Irish audience, would a Press Council here be able to do anything if a similar matter were to arise in Ireland? …

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