Controversies in Regulation

The PCC has been widely criticised for being ineffective and failing to keep the press in check. It can be argued that because it is funded by the newspaper industry, it will never be able to fulfill it's purpose properly at all. Another controversy of the PCC is that although complaints are free and simple to make, they can only be done once the damage has been done. They also only look properly into a small proportion of complaints, for example in 2002 - only 36 out of 2360 were looked into. A further fault that people find with the PCC is that is has a significant lack of power in giving out penalties, as it can only demand that the offending party offers a publicised apology.