David Lister: Why we should be complaining about the PCC

'Are newspaper editors really sufficiently disinterested to be a key part of this self-regulation?'

Let us for a moment consider the state of the Press Complaints Commission and newspaper self-regulation from the perspective of a concerned newspaper reader. She – many of the PCC's recent adversaries, from Anna Ford to Sara Cox to Vanessa Feltz, have been female, so grammatical positive discrimination is not amiss – may have listened to Today on Radio 4 yesterday.

There she will have heard Stuart Kuttner, the managing editor of the News of the World, agree with his paper's description of Charles Moore, the editor of The Daily Telegraph, as "Lord Snooty" and "the hypocrite of Fleet Street". Charles Moore then likened being insulted by the News of the World to a "lunatic coming up to you on the Tube".

She will have heard Mr Moore repeat the point I made here a couple of weeks ago – that it was wrong for the director of the PCC and his partner to holiday with the editor of the News of the World and her partner, as there must be seen to be distance between the PCC and editors.

Our newspaper reader would doubtless agree with that. If she had time on her hands she might then study the papers from yesterday and the weekend, and note internecine hostility and vitriol. There was the News of the World editorial describing The Daily Telegraph as a "struggling, dreary newspaper [which] repeatedly breaches PCC press guidelines". Our reader would be as puzzled by this as by the News of the World describing Guy Black as the "distinguished" PCC director. Thoughtful he certainly is, but it's a bit early in his career for him to be distinguished.

Our reader may not care about the rights and wrongs of all this, but it would be her right to conclude that if the papers distrust each other's integrity, why should she trust them to be regulators? Thus inspired to ponder on the shortcomings of the PCC and the current state of self-regulation, she would give passing thought to the following random episodes, much rehearsed in the press in recent days.

First, the ruling of the PCC, defended by Lord Wakeham only last month, that Anna Ford and her family had no right to privacy on a public beach in Mallorca. If the PCC had wished to advocate a new class system where celebrities only holiday on private beaches, it could hardly have done better.

Second, the Prince Harry drink and drugs story, where a behind-the-scenes deal between palace and PCC has been alleged.

Third, the "Sophiegate" tapes where the PCC was again alleged to have gone behind the scenes with Royal aides to stop a News of the World scoop by helping to secure an interview for the newspaper with the Countess of Wessex. Only those with a ludicrously naïve understanding of the press would have believed that this would have buried the tapes.

Our newspaper reader would surely begin to wonder why the PCC was not more transparent and consistent in its operations.

Transparent it is certainly not. When I phoned last week to check that Lord Wakeham earned £156,000 a year for his three-day week, a PCC spokesman replied: "I've seen that figure quoted, but I don't know if it's right and I'm not interested." There speaks the body that regulates part of the communications industry.

Our reader might wonder, too, what actually goes on at PCC meetings. She couldn't be blamed for thinking the unthinkable. Are editors really sufficiently disinterested and above reproach to be a key part of this self-regulation? The editor of The Sunday People, estimable chap that he is, is soon to be cited by the Radio 1 presenter Sara Cox under human rights legislation over his paper's pictures of her naked on a private holiday. Yet he is on the PCC's panel. Is it comfortable for the editor of The Sunday Telegraph, who is on the panel, to be involved in censuring the editor of The Daily Telegraph, who is not? Worse, might it be too comfortable?

Why is there a need for the director or chairman to attempt secret behind-the-scenes deals? The PCC exists to adjudicate and urge good practice, not to broker compromises. Why indeed wait for a complaint in the first place? One important change the PCC could make is for it to become proactive and speak out on abuses before the formality of a complaint.

Bill Norris of the pressure group Presswise makes the very fair point that a proactive PCC is particularly important in cases of racial or ethnic slurs, which at present can be ignored because of the commission's refusal to accept "third party" complaints. Damian Tambini, senior research fellow at the Institute for Public Policy Research, makes the crucial point that the much used and much abused term 'the public interest" needs to be properly and publicly defined by the PCC.

Among editors there is no such consensus. Charles Moore says there is "a lack of fairness in the relationships between the PCC and newspapers. The public must be assured that it works."

Roger Alton of The Observer adds: "There probably is an issue around quite how close editors should be to the PCC administration. I'm a fan of self-regulation, but the behind-the-scenes deals must stop."

However, Piers Morgan, the editor of The Mirror, tells me: "It is facile for broadsheets to claim the PCC hasn't worked when it so patently has. We have to be very careful in light of Lord Wakeham's departure that we don't allow broadsheet editors with embarrassingly small circulations to put one of their cronies in to dictate how mass-market, dare I say popular, newspapers go about our successful businesses. I say we have cleaned up our act enormously in the last decade. Self-regulation, despite all the predictably miserable bleatings from my broadsheet pals, has worked very well. So much so that public figures now have more to fear from the likes of Charles Moore and his dumbed-down Telegraph than me."

Of course, one could argue that any cronyism at the moment is between PCC and tabloids rather than broadsheets. But, with a more transparent PCC all such insinuations would be redundant.

No one in the newspaper industry wants regulation by government. The temptation for any government to confuse the public interest with its own interest would be overwhelming.

The courts are another option. The argument against the courts ruling on intrusion of privacy were reinforced by Lord Wakeham just before his departure. He contrasted "the quick and effective procedures of self-regulation" with "the more cumbersome, time-consuming and costly procedures of the law". But why should a lengthy procedure be worse than a quick fix if the lengthy procedure established a precedent that would inform all future newspaper practice?

Today a meeting of Pressbof, the inelegant sounding body that funds the PCC, will decide what long-term measures to take over Lord Wakeham's decision to stand down temporarily as chairman while the Enron investigations continue. There is a likelihood that the newspaper managing directors and other senior executives who make up Pressbof will decide that Lord Wakeham's absence should not be temporary, but permanent. The PCC, after all, needs stability and consistency.

But it needs more than that. It needs transparency and accountability. Unless it moves quickly to secure public and newspaper confidence, it is possible that by the time the Enron investigations are complete, there may not be a PCC for Lord Wakeham, or anyone, to chair.