Monday 29 March 2010

Let the press be the press

There's this episode of The West Wing where the Bartlett administration realises its just been pussying around for the first eighteen months in office and whilst it has lots of great ideas, they usually just dip their toes in the water and don't follow through. To counter the malais, after some worthwhile plot points, they decide to be more audacious and "Let Bartlett be Bartlett".

I understand that the Press Complaints Commission is making inroads into ruling the blogosphere. Rod Liddel was being a little racist on the Spectator's blog and the Press Complaints Commission have censured him.

Wikipedia has it that in 2006 the PCC received a total of 3,325 complaints, yet in 2009 when they received more than 25,000 complaints about a single incident, it would not uphold the complaints.

Clearly after 385 years of free press in the UK, the entire existance of the PCC is superfluous, and just a passing fad from the 90s, like Britpop or baggy, so now is the time to get rid of the damned thing.

But how? Its funded by the newspapers themselves and receives nothing from the government except the threat that if the PCC didn't exist there would be a government controlled equivalent in place.

So its going to be a waiting game. As papers like The Times and The Independant slowly die off, the PCC's funding will decrease and they'll just wither.

Unless, of course, some other funding stream appears. Bloggers levy perhaps? ISP levy? Maybe just government handouts.
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