The Press and the Establishment. Part Two.

Part two of The Press and the Establishment.

A few of the reasons for my deep sense of injustice with regard to a decision by the Press Complaints Commission are given below.
A Press Complaints official informed me , in a letter, that there would be no further correspondence from the PCC to me.
This same officer had "amalgamated" two emails from the Editor into one for "the sake of convenience", one of the emails from the Editor was not even addressed to her. There was no indication on the "amalgamated" email that it was anything other than what it appeared to be.
That " amalgamated" email may have been presented to the Commission Members, by the complaints officer, in support of a draft ruling to help them come to a decision regarding my complaint.
If I had not seen a reference to "emails" [inferring more than one] I would not have known that two emails from the Editor had been sent to the PCC on that particular day.
I wrote to both the Chairman and the Independent Charter Commissioner of the PCC and expressed my feelings of injustice, I did not expect and did not get a reply.
As a result I wrote, individually, to the 17 members of the PCC and explained my feeling of injustice, among other things. Three of them replied and stated that they were no longer Members of the Commission, a fourth replied that he felt sure normal channels for a complaint were in place , he had completely missed the point of my writing to him directly.
Comparatively recently a new Chairperson of the PCC been appointed, I wrote to her and asked her to review my complaint, I did not receive a reply.

As far as I am aware there is no method of appealing against a decision by the PCC and they are not subject to the Freedom of Information Act. I understand that a Chairman at the time did not favour the appointment of an Ombudsman in connection with the PCC.

For a body that sings the praises of Self Regulation and of Fairness they are extremely autocratic.

This blog about "The Press and the Establishment" will be continued in Part Three.

Frederick W Gilling Friday 30 October 2009.