Press Complaints Commission

It is clear from the 2009 figures that the PCC is increasingly busy. Many more people contacted us to raise concerns than ever before. We carried out a record a number of investigations and settled more complaints by mediation than at any other time in the PCC's history. Overall, more complaints had merit in 2009 than in any previous year.

We are proud of these figures because they show that people can trust the PCC to set matters right when they have gone wrong. They also seem to show that the public sees the Commission as a helpful forum for expressing concern about the press, even if there has not actually been a breach of the Code of Practice. After all, the rise in overall contacts continues to exceed the rise in cases that have merit.

But at the heart of the Commission's work are the individual cases, some of which we examine in the remainder of this section. Those cases raise numerous issues; they can be extraordinary or mundane. Statistically, there are two key causes of complaint – inaccuracy and intrusion into privacy. Of complaints that warranted investigation, over 85% made claims about breaches of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code.

Privacy remained the area that often caused most controversy, with the Commission having to balance the competing rights of individual privacy and freedom of expression. 21% of all investigated complaints had a privacy angle to them. And when it came to published rulings, over 50% dealt with concerns about privacy. That figure rose to over 55% in cases where the editor was censured, which may reflect the seriousness with which the PCC views an unwarranted invasion of privacy.