Press Complaints Commission exposed in wake of Jan Moir’s attack on Stephen Gately
Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir was only doing her job when she attacked former Boyzone singer Stephen Gately’s lifestyle on the eve of his funeral.
She knew her words would cause offence as she’s paid to be controversial, but is unlikely to have anticipated that more than 22,000 complaints would be made to the Press Complaints Commission. Nevertheless, the commission was initially reluctant to investigate as its rules prevent it from taking third party complaints, but a convenient loophole appears to have been found.
This episode supports the growing belief that the Press Complaints Commission is a sham regulator and the campaign to replace the commission with a public regulator: support the Downing Street petition.
As others have pointed out, this is not a free speech issue. Even if Jan Moir’s right to spread homophobia trumps the rights of gay people to live free from hate, such a right does not automatically extend to a column in a national newspaper.
But the issue goes deeper. Jan Moir is commissioned by her editor, the pornographer Paul Dacre, who also chairs the commission’s code of practice committee, to be controversial. She has done her job extremely well, boosting visitors to the Daily Mail website by 21 per cent. Job done.
Just as big business is increasingly accepting a need to conduct its affairs responsibly, so the media needs a strong ethical code committing it accurate reporting. Moir’s suggestion that Gately’s death was due to smoking ‘at least cannabis’ (a drug not been linked to deaths of this nature) rather than natural causes as stated by the coroner, should have been struck from her piece. She should not have been allowed to criticise Gately’s mother for ‘insisting’ that the coroner got it right.
If anything, accuracy is more important in a comment piece, as it is here that the newspaper attempts to bring the facts together and offer readers a conclusion. Moir’s conclusion that ‘Gately’s death… strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships,’ hardly stands on her fabricated evidence and merely reveals her prejudices.
Sadly, the newspaper industry has proved unable to regulate itself, the Press Complaints Commission is clearly not fit for purpose and should be replaced with a public body.
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