Bloggers launch petition to change Editors' Code

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A group of bloggers has launched an online petition to back its proposals to reform the Editors' Code, which is enforced by the Press Complaints Commission (PCC).

The 14 blogs, which include those of Sunny Hundal , editor of Liberal Conspiracy, and co-editor of the Liberal Democrat Voice website Mark Pack , have five suggestions to improve the code, which is being reviewed by the Editors Code Committee.

The recommendations made by the group focus in particular on transparency and online publishing. Suggestion one asks for "Like-for-like placement of retractions, corrections and apologies in print and online"; while the fourth suggestion asks for "Sources to be credited unless they do not wish to be credited or require anonymity/protection."

"We think that this is a sensible set of suggestions and that no reasonable newspaper editor could disagree with them," writes Dave Cross, one of the bloggers backing the proposals, in a post .

"If we can get a large number of people signing the petition then hopefully that will make it less likely that the PCC can dismiss our submission out of hand."

The group will submit its recommendations to the Editors' Code of Practice Committee by 25 January and it is this committe and not the PCC that will handle the bloggers' submission. The group is also planning a separate submission to the independent Governance review of the PCC .

The petition with more than 500 signatures was previously available at this link - http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/pcc/ , but at time of writing a technical problem with the iPetition site had made it unavailable.