APPENDIX 10
Memorandum submitted by Mr Ken Creffield
Max Clifford is quite right: the Press Complaints
Commission is a "waste of time". So was its predecessor,
the Press Council.
As a local newspaper reporter for 10 years and
a Fleet Street sub-editor for 30 years, I never once thought of
the PC/PCC in connection with any work was doing. I thought about
my bosses, and what they might say if I cocked things up, and
I thought about the High Court.
Fortunately, I never worked for a rag like the
Daily Mail. The bosses I worked for, at the PA, Observer,
Guardian, Wiltshire Times, Surrey Herald,
Bristol Evening Post and Bristol Evening World,
all aimed to be fair, accurate and libel free.
From his evidence to you, Paul Dacre obviously
feels very comfortable with the PCC, a sure sign that it is a
toothless watchdog.
There is no doubt that the Daily Mail is
very slick and professional but it also paints a highly distorted
and one-sided view of the world.
I say this as a Labour voter but my father,
an ardent Conservative and a Mail reader, had similar misgivings.
At election times, when he always volunteered to work as a canvasser
and leaflet distributor, he would cancel the Mail and switch
to the Telegraph for the duration of the campaign.
He could not abide the Mail's rabid and
bigoted election antics.
I would say that the public has very little
to complain about in the British press. If they don't like the
Sun/People/Star/Mail or whatever, all they have to do is
stop buying them.
But when, occasionally, someone is unfairly
hurt by the media, I believe—like Max Clifford—that
the victim should have recourse to legal aid.
26 February 2003
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