Rod Liddle Rod Liddle

Why I’m complaining to the PCC<br />

A few more points about the PCC adjudication; apologies if you’re getting bored.

The first is indisputable: if I had blogged on a website of my own, rather than here, then they would have not got involved. So the upshot is that blogs associated with newspapers will end up not being like blogs at all (for reasons I’ll come to tomorrow), but like MSM articles in all but name.

Second, contrary to what has been written about the adjudication in some areas (and repeated on here), the PCC did NOT accuse me of inaccuracy. It was very careful not to do so. It said that we (The Spectator, but presumably they meant me) had provided some evidence to back up my claim, but had “not been able to demonstrate that the overwhelming majority of crimes in ALL the stated categories had been carried out by members of the Afro-Caribbean community.” Well, that’s a different kettle of fish. As I said before, it offered no alternative sets of stats to the ones I produced (hardly surprising: there aren’t any). The implication seems to be that the chief objection was to the word “overwhelming”; or perhaps the deeper and more dangerous point that in the absence of centrally collated stats, one should never offer an opinion based upon whatever evidence IS available. My suspicion, though, is that the PCC’s judgement was simply a politically correct reflex, exacerbated by its embarrassment over the Jan Moir affair. I think we can test this thesis of mine by referring another article to the PCC, which I will do as soon as the PCC has risen from its Easter break.

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