PCC rules on Jan Moir: a strange and troubling ruling. 4
The Guardian reports that the PCC has rejected all the complaints (more than 25,000) about Jan Moir's article about Stephen Gately.
As it's late, I shall limit myself to comparing the reported ruling with the original article ...
PCC: "While many complainants considered that there was an underlying tone of negativity towards Mr Gately and the complainant on account of the fact that they were gay, it was not possible to identify any direct uses of pejorative or prejudicial language in the article."
Jan Moir: "the ooze of a very different and more dangerous lifestyle has seeped out for all to see".
What lifestyle does she mean here?
Jan Moir: "Gay activists are always calling for tolerance and understanding about same-sex relationships, arguing that they are just the same as heterosexual marriages. Not everyone, they say, is like George Michael. Of course, in many cases this may be true."
How gracious - "may" be true "in many cases" that "not everyone" is like George Michael (whatever that means).
Jan Moir: "Another real sadness about Gately's death is that it strikes another blow to the happy-ever-after myth of civil partnerships."
What's she saying, that all civil partnerships are doomed to end unhappily?
PCC: Moir's claim that Gately's death had not been "natural", while controversial and speculative, "could not be established as accurate or otherwise".
Couldn't we have just use the post mortem to decide this?
The whole tone was offensive - phrases like "he could barely carry a tune in a Louis Vuitton trunk" and "like a broken teacup in the rented cottage" are so obviously a linguistic swipe at homosexuals and Jan Moir's middle-class perception of the kinds of sex *all* gay men have.
She claimed that she wasn't being deliberately offensive and her use of words was accidental or innocent - I'd say she's a lying cow who quite obviously chose the words she used to skirt the boundaries of manimum offence.
Quite frankly, this couldn't have gone much better for Jan Moir. Now everyone knows her name (albeit for the wrong reasons) and she wasn't even given a slap on the wrists for her obviously inappropriate remarks.
This sets a great precedent for all other writers wanting a bit of instant publicity.
I think the PCC made absolutely the right decision - based on the code and past precedent. But the body remains opaque and unaccountable and without reform, people are going to lose faith in the system of press self-regulation.
http://blog.matthewcain.co.uk/the-pcc-got-it-right-on-jan-moir-complaint/
Not that surprising. Take a look at the latest complaint stats - they're on the PCC website. The ratio of lodged complaints to upheld complaints is... well, take a look.