Comment is free – until the crowd makes Ofcom nervous

It's that old dividing line again: the difference between self-regulation (Press Complaints Commission) and statutory regulation (Ofcom). Twenty-five thousand instantly orchestrated protests, complaining about Jan Moir's Mail column on the death of Stephen Gately, pour into the PCC. The commission ponders, and decides that an apologetic Jan and her murkily confusing piece may have been "tasteless and offensive" – but that press freedom means it shouldn't deal in bad taste and offence. Columnists have a necessary right to sound off come what may. It's not for the chief constable of Cambridge, the professor of communications law at Queen Mary College, or the chairman of the Internet Watch Foundation (among others) to start blue-pencilling opinions, however grottily expressed. Comment is free, in print as online. And Ofcom, in a parallel case? The same breed of great and good commissioners would have been deciding, of course, but they would have turned automatically to paragraph 2.3 of the broadcasting code. "Broadcasters must ensure that material which may cause offence is justified by the context (see meaning of "context" below). Such material may include, but is not limited to, offensive language, violence, sex, sexual violence, humiliation, distress, violation of human dignity, discriminatory treatment or language (for example on the grounds of … sexual orientation)." Oh! and "context" includes the size and composition of the audience. So 25,000 angry letters, not to mention humiliation, distress and dignity, would surely have sunk Ms Moir. And the really serious question – beyond tweet or belligerent blog – is how much we want our press to be ruled by a quango that can decide what can or can't be written in terms (among other things) of how many take umbrage. Don't publish, escape damnation? It doesn't exactly resound.