PCC year at a glance

PCC rules that term 'tranny' is discriminatory

The PCC ruled for the first time that a newspaper had published discriminatory information about a transsexual. It criticised the Sunday Life for describing a transsexual person as a 'tranny', saying that the term was 'a needless abbreviation, held by many to be offensive' and pejorative to the complainant.

This case is a good example of how the PCC system works: the Code of Practice had been recently changed in order to protect transsexuals specifically; a complaint was made by an affected party; the PCC has upheld the complainant's position and set a clear principle for the whole industry that the term 'tranny' should not be used to describe transgendered individuals.

PCC appoints ex-Chief Constable as public member

Julie Spence OBE QPM who is the former Chief Constable of Cambridgeshire Constabulary was appointed as a public member. Julie now sits on the Phone Hacking Review Committee as well as being a vocal member of the main Commission.

The system for appointing public members has since been amended following the independent Governance Review of the PCC. The first posts under the new system were advertised at the beginning of 2011.

PCC further develops rules on social networking

The PCC issued a ruling against The Sunday Times, which established two principles in regard to the journalistic use of social networking sites:

‒ It is possible to harass an individual by unwanted contact using Facebook;

‒ Context is vital when using material (especially in tragic cases) taken from a person's social networking page.

The Commission said:
'Newspapers still remained entitled, when reporting the death of an individual, to make use of publicly available material obtained from social networking sites. However, editors should always consider the impact on grieving families when taking such information (which may have been posted in a jocular or carefree fashion) from its original context and using it within a tragic story about that person's death.'

PCC makes police visit

As part of our ongoing programme to help expand the reach of the PCC, we are in contact with police services across the country regularly. We visited Derbyshire Constabulary to speak to officers about the PCC and its work.

Advisory notes

In January, they included:
‒ Asking a Sunday newspaper to discontinue its contact with a family who indicated that they did not wish to comment publicly about their situation;

‒ Circulating a request that a medical detail relating to a celebrity not be published;

‒ Circulating a request from a victim of violent crime that gratuitous details of the offence not be republished when the convicted man was shortly to be released.