The Press Complaints Commission, the British regulatory body for newspapers and magazines, announced it has noticed a lapse in the accuracy of reporting as journalism heads online, with a record number of complaints in 2008, according to Press Gazette. The Commission is also wary of the affects recent cutbacks at newspapers will have on journalistic standards.

As part of its annual report, the PCC published the details of its 4,700 complaints for 2008, an 8 percent increase from the year before. For the second year running, online stories were the source of a majority of the gripes.

According to Press Gazette, departing PCC Chairman Sir Christopher Meyer noted, "We've noticed some wobble in standards in areas of online reporting where it's clear the pressure of time and the 24-hour news cycle may have led people to put up stories which haven't been thoroughly vetted."

Meyer also attributed the record number of complaints to the success of self-regulation. He noted the success of the transition of the PCC into a multi-faceted department for public information on the media. "We have morphed from being purely a complaints service to be a citizens' advice bureau on the media," he said.

Meyer was clear about the dangers of salvaging profit at the expense of editorial standards, describing it as like "selling the family jewellery." He stressed the need to balance the role of the press as a business and a pillar of democratic society, "Newspaper groups are businesses and have got to find a business model which reconciles high standards with profitability."

However at this point Meyer said that there has not been any perceivable affect from the industry cutbacks. "If we do notice something which appears to be linked to some of the hollowing-out that's going on in the industry, I'm sure we would say something," he said, according to the Press Gazette report.