Press Complaints Commission

The Press Complaints Commission (PCC) was a voluntary regulatory body for British printed newspapers and magazines, consisting of representatives of the major publishers from 1991 until its shutdown in September 2014 following the News International phone hacking scandal in 2011. The scandal resulted in the judicial Leveson Inquiry led by Lord Justice Leveson into the culture, practices and ethics of the British press and led to the formation of the royal Charter on self-regulation of the press to oversee press regulators as they had shown to be ineffective in self-regulating without oversight.

The PCC was funded by the annual levy it charged newspapers and magazines. It had no legal powers – all newspapers and magazines voluntarily contributed to the costs of, and adhered to the rulings of, the commission, making the industry self-regulating. Prior to its closing, Lord Hunt was appointed Chairman of PCC in October 2011.

Following the News International phone hacking scandal, PCC received heavy criticism from British Members of Parliament (MP) and Prime Minister [at the time] David Cameron, who called for it to be replaced with a new system in July 2011. In December 2011 Lord Hunt announced plans to replace the PCC with a new independent regulator. Hunt also planned to introduce a voluntary, paid-for, 'kitemarking' system for blogs. The kitemark would indicate that the blogger has agreed to strive for accuracy, and to be regulated. Bloggers would lose their kitemark if complaints against them were repeatedly upheld. Hunt's plan was to start the roll-out by targeting bloggers that coverered current affairs at the time.

The same day of PCC's closure, 8 September 2014, it was replaced by a newly formed group, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), chaired by Sir Alan Moses and previous members of the press of PCC. The new royal charter created the Press Recognition Panel (PRP) in November 2014 to provider oversight on press regulatory bodies under the royal charter. IPSO did not seek approval under the Press Recognition Panel.

A 2024 review by the Press Recognition Panel found that IPSO had not lived up to its promises, and was acting much like its predecessor PCC had, raising "serious concerns that IPSO represents only the latest stage in what Lord Leveson defined as a pattern of cosmetic reform by the press." The report found that IPSO had only investigated 3.82% of reports and only upheld 0.56% of complaints it received over a five-year period from 2018 to 2022, despite having received more complaints than PCC had previously. The panel compared the organization with IMPRESS, the only independent regulatory body that has sought, and received approval to regulate media it oversees, which had upheld 21.67% of complaints it received during a six-year period from 2018 to 2023.