History of the press regulation

Throughout a period of time there were several types of publications that were used to send across news and potential rumours to the public. Examples of these included pamphlets and posters. The first renowned news piece was compiled in strasbourg which was known as Johann Carolus' Relation aller Furnemmen und gededckwurdigen Historien at around 1605.

The court of law went on to ban all english news books due to complaints from Austrian and Spainish diplomats, but they carried on printing news stories in Amsterdam to smuggle over to Britain for the time being until it became legalised again.

The civil war had news pamphlets reporting on the war often portraying a biased point of view towards each of the sides.

The press regulation commenced just after the second world war, it was established following pressure from the National Union of Journalists which was aimed to promote the interests of consumers and research into the print industries long term impact socially and economically.

The general council was formed in response to critics demanding for improvement. It was then critisised further in 1973 as privacy was the issue this time and they urged a written code of practice which was then rejected by the press council.

The PCC (press complaints commission) are not responsible for any breaches guilty of prosecution. The code consists of 16 clauses which the press can be prosecuted for by the public including respect for privacy and harassment. Statutory controls on press freedom are widely regarded as an unreasonable restriction on freedom of speech, and as such of democratic rights.

One of the most common complaints is about the PCC is about their lack of authority when imposing penalties. Overall the PCC recieved 4,340 complaints in 2007 which was an increase in last year.