Rod Liddle Censured For Talking Out Of His Arse

The new owners of the Independent may have missed a trick by overlooking Rod Liddle as editor: the former Today presenter has a bloodhound's knack for following the wafted scent of controversy. Liddle is to carve out a small nugget of online history by being the first journalist to have a blog censured by the Press Complaints Commission, for making things up about crime in London. Writing on his Spectator blog in December, Liddle made the inflammatory claim that "the overwhelming majority of [violent crime] in London is carried out by young men from the African-Caribbean community". After complaints from the public, the PCC investigated. They ruled that Liddle's piece broke Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors' Code of Practice, and said that it was incumbent on the Spectator to ensure it was corrected.