Citizen driven media complaints

A couple of months ago I was considering how you could open up the Press Complaints Commission. Two of the biggest problems with the PCC, as currently constructed are:

1. that it will only accept complaints from a very small number of people. The majority of complaints are stopped at source.
2. that mediated corrections (the majority solution) are rarely perceived to be commensurate with the original story

My solution was Digg meets Pledgebank meets the PCC. It goes as follows:

1. You join the citizen media complaints commission. You pay, say, £5 a month to join
2. Anyone can register a complaint with a piece of media coverage. The complainant makes their complaint and states how they want it to be addressed
3. Members of the commission vote as to the most deserving complaint.
4. The winning complaint gets all the money in the kitty to pay for publicity to rectify their complaint. This could be Google advertising, a billboard outside the newspapers, students paid to flyer journalists - whatever.

I've not been able to take this forward in 2008. So I'm asking for your help to finesse the idea, restructure it, mash it up - whatever. As long as you can commit some time to making something happen in this space in 2009.

Press Complaints Commission - a model of inaction

I want to bring attention to a very important article by Martin Moore of the Media Standards Trust about the Press Complaints Commission.

I can't find anything in it with which I disagree, so here are my modest suggestions for reform:

• Bodies like the Media Standards Trust need to build a public coalition around a reform agenda
• There must be a public trigger for the PCC where a number of complaints leads to an automatic investigation
• The PCC must be able to act when a press article causes sufficient public concern that failure to act would bring the industry into disrepute
• The PCC must remain politically independet but, perhaps, should report annually to parliament as other regulators do

Any other suggestions?