SCOTTISH newspapers accounted for 8.7 per cent of the cases investigated by the Press Complaints Commission last year – according to an analysis of the organisation’s annual report.
Says HoldtheFrontPage, the PCC received more than 7,000 written complaints last year, and of the 1,687 cases deemed worthy of further investigation, half involved national newspapers, 33.7 per cent concerned regional newspapers outwith Scotland, 8.7 per cent involved Scottish newspapers, 2.1 per cent Northern Irish newspapers and 4.9 per cent magazines.
Of the complaints which were investigated, the PCC judged that some 750 “had merit” under the terms of its Editors’ Code of Practice, meaning they “raised a likely breach of the Code”.
The annual report adds that the PCC “successfully mediated or ruled” on 557 cases that related to privacy last year; that some 544 complaints were “amicably settled through the Commission’s mediation service”; and there there were 188 “complaints in respect of which newspapers offered remedial action that the Commission considered to be sufficient, even though an amicable settlement was not reached”.
The report adds that the PCC “acted to prevent media harassment on just over 100 occasions, by passing on private advisory notices and desist requests to the industry”.
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