Sir Christopher Meyer, chairman of the Press Complaints Commission, has branded the Media Standards Trust's report criticising the press watchdog "unbalanced and misleading". The PCC chairman, who said last week it was an "absolute outrage" that the MST had not talked to the PCC before publishing it...

On your brand new Media Talk podcast, Matt Wells is joined by Maggie Brown and Steve Busfield to discuss the process of press self-regulation. The Media Standards Trust issued a report this week saying the PCC is 'ineffective, unaccountable and opaque'. But if self-regulation is so flawed, what's th...

With the intention of following up with some more comprehensive ideas and suggestions, here’s a start on the regulation debate, following the publication of the Media Standards Trust’s new report (report in full at this link), which has provoked considerable discussion around the web. Is...

After Heather Mills used a live appearance on GMTV in April 2008 to call on the British public to boycott the tabloids, insisting she had been victimised by editors, hounded by the paparazzi and even claiming she had considered killing herself, the Sun ran a front-page story questioning the former m...

The Press Complaints Commission is investigating a front-page story in the Sun newspaper that claimed Islamic extremists were targeting The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar. On 7 January the Sun's front page splash, under the headline "Terror Target Sugar", quoted claims by "anti-terror expert" Glen J...

If the Wordle and other coverage isn’t enough, here’s Sun editor, Rebekah Wade’s Hugh Cudlipp speech in full [note: may have differed very slightly in actual delivery]: The challenging future of national and regional newspapers is now the staple diet of media commentators. If you h...

The Mail on Sunday has retracted a story that claimed a senior Labour MP had accused schools secretary Ed Balls of using the issue of city academies to promote his own position in the party. Yesterday's correction unequivocally withdrew the original story dated 19 October last year that had been bas...

Heather Mills has made a series of complaints to the UK's press watchdog about alleged harassment, inaccurate reporting and invasion of privacy over articles in four newspapers, including the Sun and Daily Mail. MediaGuardian.co.uk understands that, in total, Mills has made six separate claims to Pr...

I'm not sure that it's even worth asking why Gordon Smart has run long-lens photos of Gary Barlow's kids ("Daniel, who is eight next month, and six-year-old Emily", as Gordo helpfully points out), because the PCC rules about children are pretty clear: Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her p...