PCC, PressBof's secrecy and defence of self-regulation

http://fullrunner.com/05/2011/magazines/defenders-of-self-regulation-rusbridger-v-dacre-black/ 12.6.11 Peter Kirwan

Self-regulation: Rusbridger v. Dacre/Black

By Peter Kirwan | Published: Thursday 12 May 2011

The first thing you’ll notice when you read the annual report of the Press Board of Finance is that it looks like a restaurant menu, from somewhere like the Savoy Grill in pre-Gordon Ramsay days.
The second notable thing is the anachronistic language, which reads like a cross between a press statement from Buckingham Palace and a letter to shareholders written by the CEO of a British company in the 1950s.
Like the contents of a time capsule, the Press Board’s annual report is shockingly odd, alarmingly antique. It’s a reminder that the modernizing corporatism of the Blair-Brown years didn’t quite reach into every nook and cranny of public life.
Little known and even less well understood, The Press Board of Finance (or PressBof as it styles itself) is the shadowy club of newspaper and magazine executives that finances the Press Complaints Commission by levying fees on publishers.
But there’s more to PressBof than the £2m of membership fees it collects annually. This, after all, is the cabal — self-regulating and apparently self-perpetuating — that writes the rules enforced by the Press Complaints Commission.