Cheryl Cole - An apology

No, Cheryl isn't apologising for crimes against music, the Sun is for, contain your surprise now, making things up.

Cheryl Cole - An Apology...

AS part of our coverage of the break-up of Cheryl and Ashley Cole's marriage we reported on March 4 that the singer would fly to France to meet her estranged husband who was texting her lines from her songs.
We accept Cheryl did not fly to France, no such texts were sent and she denies saying she was scared of life as a single girl as we reported on March 1.

We are happy to set the record straight and apologise to Cheryl.

No flight, no texts, not scared. No truth.

The sun seemed so happy to set the record straight that the apology had to be negotiated through the PCC.

Adjudication over "Boy, 12, turns into girl" report.

The Press Complaints Commission upheld the complaints under clauses 1 and 3 of the code, but rejected further breaches of 3, 4, 6 and 12:

A married couple complained to the Press Complaints Commission through the charity Mermaids that two articles headlined "Boy, 12, turns into girl" and "Now boy, 9, is girl", published in The Sun on 18 September 2009 and 19 September 2009 respectively, contained inaccuracies in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) and intruded into their daughter's private life in breach of Clause 3 (Privacy) of the Editors' Code of Practice.

The complaint was upheld.

Separate complaints under Clauses 3 (Privacy), 4 (Harassment), 6 (Children) and 12 (Discrimination) were not upheld. A further complaint from a second couple through Mermaids was also not upheld.

The complainants' child was born as a boy but had begun to behave as a girl from an early age. At 8, her parents allowed her to live as a girl at home. She then moved from primary to secondary school and her name was changed. Following incidents of teasing, the secondary school held a meeting with other children to explain her new situation. After this, some parents of the children had discussed the matter online and threats had been made against the family. The 18 September article reported the story - without naming the family - and a further article appeared the next day.

The complainants said that the article was inaccurate when it stated that their daughter was "preparing for sex swap surgery". There were other inaccuracies in the piece in regard to: the child's uniform; what she wore for swimming lessons; her hairstyle and accessories; the colour of her micro-scooter; and the provision of toilet facilities in both schools. These points gave a misleading impression of the child. The complainants also said that the newspaper had passed on their contact details without consent to a TV production company, which then wrote requesting an interview.

The newspaper said that the child now looked, acted and wished to be treated as a girl and was in that sense "preparing" for surgery. The other points did not appear to be significant, but it offered to publish a correction and apology on them. The newspaper accepted that it had passed on the complainants' details to the TV production company. The subsequent approach had been made by letter only and no interview had taken place.

Decision:
Upheld

Adjudication:

Adjudication

The Commission agreed that the cumulative effect of the inaccuracies served to give a misleading impression of the girl's appearance and behaviour at the school. This was unacceptable and the newspaper should have taken greater care when publishing details of such a vulnerable child. This raised a breach of Clause 1 of the Code.

In addition, the newspaper had passed on the family's details to a third party - therefore identifying the child - at a time when it had been specifically informed that further contact from the media was unwelcome. Given that the newspaper had recognised the need to avoid naming the child publicly, the decision to identify her to a third party (who would not otherwise have known who she was) was clearly an error. The paper had shown a failure to respect her private and family life in breach of Clause 3 of the Code.

The Sun really can't seem to get its facts straight when it reports on children - first the Alfie Patten fiasco, which the paper got nowhere near the amount of criticism it should have had for claiming that he'd fathered a child when he had not - now this, getting almost every factual detail about the girl's life at school completely wrong. It would be interesting to know who this third party was that the Sun released the name of the child to, just to see whether there was potential collusion between broadcasters owned or co-owned by the same parent company as the Sun, but that's a detail stricken from the record. Naming and shaming it seems is all right for paedophiles and criminals, but not newspapers that breach the PCC's code.

The punishment for these serious breaches of the code? Err, no apology whatsoever it seems, just the publishing of the adjudication as is always required. Would be interesting to know on what page it features, especially considering as if I remember correctly both of these reports featured on the front page of the paper. Is it any wonder that so many turn to our learned friends for recompense when the PCC's rulings are so pathetically weak?

Spot the deliberate April fool.

As you might have expected, the Sun is outraged by yesterday's decision that Sky must reduce the price at which it sells its sports channels to rival broadcasters:

THE beauty of competition is that YOU decide what to watch on your telly.

Unlike the BBC, no one is forced to pay for Sky TV, part of the company that owns The Sun.

But Labour have decided Sky must hand over its content cheaply to rivals who have never taken Sky's risks to revolutionise TV sport.

Nor made the massive investment that won Sky rights to events like the Premier League and Test cricket.

Sky pays around £1billion a year to UK sports. That will be hit if the firm has to take less for its content.

Labour the party of business? A ragbag of meddling Lefties, more like.

Did you spot the deliberate mistake? No, not that Sky has ever revolutionised anything, but rather the paper's strange decision to blame the Labour party rather than err, Ofcom, the media regulator which actually made the decision. It's doubly strange as the paper's actual report correctly identifies Ofcom as the body behind the ruling.

Undoubtedly this is simply another of the paper's April fools, of which there were a further four, as surely the paper's leader writers wouldn't deliberately blame the government for something that has absolutely nothing to do with them whatsoever. If they had, then the Press Complaints Commission would surely take a dim view of such an egregious lie, coming as it does only days before the election campaign is officially launched. Clearly, the Sun would never try to mislead voters into believing that Labour is threatening their beloved sports on satellite; now that really would be a scandalous, unfounded and certainly libellous allegation.

Fury erupts as we repost something taken down elsewhere.

What a truly wonderful piece of journalism this is:

A FACEBOOK snap of a baby posing with a cigarette in his mouth sparked fury last night.

Pals of six-month-old Ollie's mum Rebecca Davey, 18, were horrified when the photo was posted by a relative on the social networking site.

The picture shows Ollie in a striped babygro with the unlit fag between his lips.

Shocked friends complained to Facebook bosses and the snap was later removed.

Thankfully though the Sun has managed to obtain a copy of the photograph, probably from said "shocked friends" who after complaining to "Facebook bosses" swiftly sold the story to the daily newspaper of record.

It's difficult to know whether there's been any potential infringement here of the Press Complaints Commission's code, presumably on the grounds that the image was first made available by the family themselves. Otherwise the second clause on children is fairly clear:

ii) A child under 16 must not be interviewed or photographed on issues involving their own or another child’s welfare unless a custodial parent or similarly responsible adult consents.

Doubtless the Sun would plead a public interest defence - if this is what they're doing to the child, even as a joke, then the authorities should be informed, as they were. Yet considering that Facebook took it down, doubtless as a breach of the network's code, why reprint the photograph when a description would have sufficed? Or is it just that there isn't much of a story, which there isn't anyway, without the photograph?

If it didn't involve a young mother, who is also naturally pictured complete with cigarette in her mouth, it's even more doubtful whether it would have found its way onto the Sun's website. What was intended as a joke, even if one in very poor taste, has been blown out of all proportion. How does this help anyone, considering the police felt there was no need for further action to be taken, except the newspaper? Answer came there none.

Off their Nutts.

Back in November the Sun decided that it was time to resort to the old tabloid trick of attacking someone by association when they couldn't lay a finger on the target himself personally. David Nutt, a senior adviser on drugs to the ACMD, had just been defenestrated by Alan Johnson for daring to argue again that cannabis isn't as dangerous as either the government claims or its classification suggests, so naturally it was time to go scouting around his children's social networking pages to see if they could find any pay dirt.

The result, an article which accused his son Stephen of partaking in cannabis because he was smoking what was clearly a roll-up and not a normal, honest, cigarette, his daughter Lydia of drinking underage, and the by no means hypocritical sneering at his eldest son for appearing naked in the snow in Sweden, ended up being removed with days of it appearing.

Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission published Stephen Nutt's letter of complaint on their website (h/t Tabloid Watch):

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper removed the article from the website, undertook not to repeat the story and published the following letter:

FURTHER to your article about photographs of me on my Facebook site, (November 14) I would like to make clear the pictures were not posted by me and while I had been drinking I was smoking a rolled-up cigarette which did not contain cannabis as the article insinuated. My younger sister Lydia was not intoxicated, so was not drinking under age. My older brother lives in Sweden where it is custom to use a sauna followed by a ‘romp' in the snow in winter. He was neither drunk nor under the influence of intoxicants. Innocuous photographs were taken out of context in an attempt to discredit my father's work.

Which is about as comprehensive and wounding a clarification as ever gets published in the Sun. The article was so obviously in breach of the PCC's code on privacy, not to mention accuracy, that it should never have been published in the first place though; why then should the paper get away without making anything approaching an apology, only having to print a clarification buried away on the letters page? As long as the PCC remains so toothless in the face of such egregious breaches of its code, the campaigning will continue not just for reform but potentially for independent regulation of the press.

"It wasn't me, it was the other three!"

BBC...

Claims back-from-the-dead canoeist John Darwin smuggled his memoirs out of jail using a rule allowing correspondence with lawyers are to be investigated.

What's this got to do with the Sun? Well, the Sun serialised them.

Christopher Hutchings, a media lawyer told the BBC there was currently no law that prevented criminals selling their stories.

"However, the Press Complaints Commission, which governs the newspaper and magazine industry, does have in its code of practice provision preventing such a situation," he said.

Very true. Item 16, part i) of the PCC code states...

Payment or offers of payment for stories, pictures or information, which seek to exploit a particular crime or to glorify or glamorise crime in general, must not be made directly or via agents to convicted or confessed criminals or to their associates – who may include family, friends and colleagues.

The Sun received the memoirs through Darwins' lawyer. Only Darwins' lawyer wasn't a lawyer but a fraudster and they both then abused the rule allowing confidential correspondence between lawyer and client.

This arrangement is used to lovely effect by the Sun to deflect the attention of breaking the PPC code of conduct back on to the Ministry of Justice...

However, the Sun claims, the Prison Service failed to carry out basic checks which would have revealed that Darwin's new "lawyer" was really a conman who was freed on licence earlier this year.

I've seen an attitude like that before. Now where was it...?

PCC: "Schizo" is not offensive

Back in May the Sun had a story about a pregnant woman who was stabbed to death by someone who suffered from paranoid schizophrenia.

The Sun had a headline "'Sorry' for stabbing by schizo" which led to 43 complaints to the Press Complaints Commission over the use of the term "schizo". There was even a comment to the article which made a simila point:

Whilst I appreciate that this is a news story and that Benjamin Holiday’s mental health condition is relevant to the case to refer to him as a “schizo” does not add to the facts, all it does is turn a mental health condition into a term of abuse.

Mental illness still carries a taboo; language like “schizo” reduces someone to their diagnosis in the most derogatory way using playground-taunts.

According to a Facebook post on by the Rethink mental health charity, the complaints will not be upheld, but it does not say why.

However, they also refer to the fact that in April the same word only led to 7 complaints and so they are not too disheartened.

[via a tip-off from Distillated]

Alfie Patten: the PCC is shown to be useless yet again.

To get an idea of just how useless the Press Complaints Commission is, you only have to look at its non-investigation into the Alfie Patten disaster. You would have thought that they might just have something to say about how the Sun, the People and the Sunday Mail had almost certainly paid his family for personal interviews which led to some of the most invasive and potentially damaging intrusion into the private lives of children for some years, only for it to subsequently turn out that, oops, Alfie wasn't the father after all.

Today the Commission announced that it is to do, well, nothing. To be fair, that isn't quite what it's done. Because of the restrictions imposed by the High Court, which prevent the families of both Patten and Chantelle Steadman from being approached, the PCC supposedly has been unable to determine exactly what was paid, what was expected in return for that payment, how the families intended to use the money, how concerned the newspapers were about the children's welfare and the circumstances surrounding the original mistaken identification of Alfie as the father. It has instead elaborated on its guidelines on payments to parents for material about their children, which while welcome, is not for a moment going to stop this happening again.

While it's unfortunate that the families themselves cannot tell their side of the story, this is letting the opposite side completely off the hook. Is the PCC a regulator or is it not? A regulator with any teeth would have demanded that the newspapers themselves reveal what was promised, and just how, if the reports of the Sun setting up a trust fund for the child are accurate, it was intending to deliver the payment. It isn't clear that this information was sought at all; instead, it seems the PCC was relying purely on the families to inform them of what deals were made.

What the papers did provide the PCC with, predictably, was their arguments on how it certainly was in the public interest for them to claim that a 13-year-old who looked more like 8 had fathered a child:

The newspapers argued that the articles involved the important issue of the prevalence, and impact, of teenage pregnancy within British society. By identifying the principals involved and presenting them in a particular way, the story dramatised and personalised these issues in a way that stimulated a wide-ranging public debate, involving contributions from senior politicians (which included the Prime Minister and Leader of the Opposition). The newspapers said that they were fulfilling an important duty in publicising to a large audience a social problem that is perceived to be widespread. Their position was that the case was, on the evidence available at the time of publication, an exceptional example of the problem.

This is all true. This however doesn't take into account the fact that it was not in either Patten or Steadman's best interests for the entire world to know intimate details about their lives, with their parents making the decision for them based presumably on the fact that there was money offered in exchanged. There was only a story because of how Patten looked; 13-year-olds being fathers is rare, but not that rare. 15-year-olds being fathers and mothers however, is not a story at all, as in this case it subsequently turned out to be. Some might think it should be a story, and that it's a sad reflection on society at large when it isn't, on which they might have something approaching a point, but that isn't the issue here. Most damningly, the newspapers don't seem to have taken any real interest in how their stories would affect the children, and in the case of the People, doesn't seem to have decided that how Patten had to be begged, almost forced to come and speak to them might have suggested that they shouldn't be running such reports.

The Sun especially must be laughing at the weakness of the PCC. To say they profited from the story would be an understatement: almost purely down to the Patten report, which went around the world at the social horror of a baby himself becoming a father, they sky-rocketed to the top of the ABCe tables, becoming the most popular UK newspaper website for Feburary, with over 27 million unique visitors. However much they promised to pay the Patten family, they must have surely more than made their money back. For a newspaper editor who has dedicated herself to campaigning for child protection, either for Sarah's law or for "justice" for Baby P, Rebekah Wade seems to have completely lost her moral compass over Patten, and the only organisation which could have punished her has spurned its opportunity.

Absolutely shameless part 2.

It's a real shame that the revelation that the Sun's story concerning Alfie Patten has been shown to be completely wrong isn't getting the attention it deserves, with the continuing row over MPs expenses overshadowing it, because the account of what actually seems to have happened continues to worsen.

In what seems to be a growing pattern of newspapers promising payments for stories only to later then renege on the details, it now appears that the Sun did not pay Patten's parents any money for the story. Whether this was because they had no intention of doing so, knowing that it would breach the Press Complaints Commission's code if they did is unclear, and it has to be said we are relying on the distinctly unreliable Max Clifford for the allegation that the paper had promised a large sum of money for the story which it then failed to stump up (his claim that he stopped the coverage seems to be erroneous; social services got a court order which definitely did stop it). The Guardian does however confirm that the paper has now promised that it will set-up a trust fund for the child itself, which distinctly suggests that considering that Patten will now presumably have no involvement with the bringing up of the child, no payment is going to be made to either him or his parents.

Clifford, for once, does seem to be on the side of justice in this case. In a previous interview with the Graun, he said that he had started representing the Patten family because of the tabloid mob which was trying to desperately get their own side of the story, trying his best to curb the excesses they were resorting to. Whether if they had gone to him first rather than to the Sun he would hold the same view is questionable, but when even Clifford thinks that a story should never have been published you ought to sit up and take notice.

The Sun, predictably, still sees no shame in what it has subjected a 13-year-old boy to as a result of both their greed and his parents' initial attempts to gain financially from the situation they seemed to have found themselves in. There is no apology in today's paper, and no editorial comment defending their reporting of the story, which is even more pathetic than if they were bothering to defend their journalism. There is however, remarkably, a comment from the paper's agony aunt attached to the main piece on the story, headlined "[K]ids who are given no sense of values". A more applicable headline would be "Journalists who are given no sense of values", as quite clearly Rebekah Wade, a woman who has repeatedly campaigned supposedly on the behalf of children, such as for Sarah's law, saw nothing wrong with paying (or rather, not) for a story about teenage pregnancy when they hadn't bothered to even ascertain the basic facts or to give even the slightest thought to what the publicity they were about to come under would do those involved's already fractured psyches.

The not paying for the story or paying less than promised is not just a Sun technique, but is now seemingly increasingly a ploy used by all the tabloids. Most recently the Sunday Express apparently refused to pay for their exclusive about Jacqui Smith's husband claiming for watching two pornographic films on expenses, which came from the same source whom has since sold the full details to the Telegraph. Prior to that, the News of the World paid a lesser sum than promised to the dominatrix who secretly filmed Max Mosley taking part in an orgy, for which he subsequently successfully sued on privacy grounds. Most indefensibly, the News of the Screws also, despite signing a contract with Iraq veteran Justin Smith for an interview, worth £15,000, then tore it up and said they would "only pay £1,000, £1,500 tops".

These are the same people, it's worth bearing in mind, who are currently raging against members of parliament for their expenses fiddles and lies. Despite everything that can be justifiably thrown at MPs, none of their claims have directly affected individual lives; when newspapers renege on deals and use and abuse the likes of Alfie Patten, they care nothing for the damage they leave in their wake. The only way we will get the root and branch reform that is required in all areas of our political culture is not just through a general election, as the Sun is calling for, but through the throwing out also of the media barons that have done just as much if not more to coarsen and diminish our representatives while also thwarting reform that threatens them as much as it does those with their noses in the trough. Any reform that focuses only on parliament and not on the media also is doomed to failure.

Absolutely shameless.

You might recall I made a rather cryptic post at the end of March regarding a truly reprehensible piece of journalism which had appeared in the Sun being proved to be wholly inaccurate. If you didn't manage to work it out, I was referring to the Alfie Patten story, the 13-year-old who at 12 while looking 8 had apparently impregnated his girlfriend, although whether that's an adequate description of her is uncertain. There was at the time wide speculation that Patten was not the father (mostly incongruous that someone who looked so young was capable of being a father), and this was confirmed when the Mirror briefly put an article up on their website suggesting that was the case, in breach of an apparent court order, resulting in it disappearing within a matter of hours.

The Sun itself is now, without a hint of shame, "revealing" that Patten is not the father, presumably meaning that either they are now breaching the court order or that it's expired/been overturned.

It was always doubtful that the Sun's story was in the public interest, and I argued over on my own blog that even if it was, there are times when even if something is in the public interest, it shouldn't necessarily become public knowledge. In a case such as this, where the paper didn't even attempt to deny that it had paid Patten's parents for the story and where it was also clear that neither the parents or the paper had any real interest in the well-being of either the baby or the baby's juvenile parents, but rather respectively their own personal enrichment and their sales, with the Sun boasting of how its completely inaccurate article had resulted in it shooting to the top of the internet newspaper rankings, the Press Complaints Commission really ought to come down like a ton of bricks.

Equally clearly, the Sun has breached the PCC's code concerning children, especially the fourth clause:

iv) Minors must not be paid for material involving children’s welfare, nor parents or guardians for material about their children or wards, unless it is clearly in the child's interest.

It was arguable that even if Patten was the father, the effect on him from being thrust onto the front page of the nation's biggest selling newspaper was hardly likely to prove conducive to him being fully involved in the child's upbringing. Now that it turns out that Patten was not the father, there simply isn't an argument: if his parents hadn't gone looking for money, and if the Sun hadn't been looking for the latest terrible example of Broken Britain, then he would still probably have had to deal with learning that he was not the father after all, but not in the full public glare. This is the sort of thing which scars people for life: newspapers know this all too well, but Patten is the sort of individual who may as well not exist except as a commodity, someone who can be used and abused and then forgotten about.

The Sun, naturally, had already featured the claims of the boy who has turned out to be the real father. As Peter Wilby noted at the time, usually those who fear they might have been the one to have knocked up a one-time girlfriend deny everything. Seeing that there was potentially money to be made, at least two and as many as six claimed they were the father. Again, without the slightest irony, the paper quotes the boy's father as saying:

He has broken down in tears at the thought he might be the father. He thinks his life has been ruined by this.

He might well be right. Patten's life though undoubtedly has been, and a baby and her parents have got off to the worst possible start imaginable, all thanks to the greed and shamelessness both of their own parents and of a newspaper that quite clearly has no morals whatsoever.

Sun in disgraceful journalism shocker.

There was a major story today which highlighted some truly reprehensible journalism by the Sun which I was intending to post on, but which has since been removed from the newspaper site on which it was posted, not I presume because it was inaccurate but because of a court order which had previously been granted that had brought the initial coverage to an end. I'm not going to repeat it because I think the story, broken in the Sun, should never have been published in the first place, but if you're so inclined you'll undoubtedly be able to find it. I do however hope that the Press Complaints Commission, which was already investigating the initial story, now throws the book at the Sun.

Hypocrisy amongst a defense of Maddie-balls.

You'd really think that the Sun would have just said nothing about Gerry McCann's evidence to the culture, media and sport select committee's investigation into press standards and left it at that. Every line and word would have the potential to be gloriously hypocritical and also highlight their own role in the smearing, not perhaps of the McCanns themselves, where they acted for the most part with relative restraint compared to their rivals, but certainly in their far less balanced coverage dedicated to Robert Murat, who the Sun along with the rest of the tabloid media paid damages to.

Instead, it's dedicated a leader to somewhat defending itself, although the real point behind it becomes evident with its conclusion. Still, let's delve in (url subject to change):

KATE and Gerry McCann suffered the double agony of losing a precious daughter — and media lies about their role in her disappearance.

Dignified Gerry says Madeleine’s nightmare abduction plunged them into an agonising “media storm”.

Distraught with shock and guilt, they faced vile claims they murdered their own child and dumped the body.

Trashy “exclusives” added to the grief of this tragically unlucky couple.

Trashy "exclusives" like splashing on the front page with a picture of a random little blonde girl who looked slightly like Madeleine, for example? Or running a completely bogus story about Murat that couldn't possibly have been true because the McCanns themselves told the paper that their daughter hadn't gone missing at the time the witness claimed to have driven them in his cab? Or a 12-page super special on the anniversary of Madeleine going missing that plumbed new depths of even tabloid journalism?

Much blame lies with Portuguese police who made up for their incompetence by smearing the McCanns as suspects, leaving them defenceless against poisonous rumour.

Ah yes, the blame the ignorant, incompetent foreigners defence. I'm pretty sure they didn't force the Sun to print what it did.

Some newspapers greedily pounced on any dodgy rubbish to increase sales.

The Sun’s own coverage was sometimes less than perfect.

But we are proud to have been praised by the McCanns for our steadfast support.

And the tabloids were not alone in this media frenzy.

The BBC’s Huw Edwards fronted the news standing outside alleged suspect Robert Murat’s front door.

Quite true, the BBC hardly helped matters by flying anchors over to Portugal, which was completely over the top. I seem to remember Sky News (majority shareholder R. Murdoch) however had an entire dedicated section to Madeleine, and when the McCanns returned from Portugal followed them for their entire journey from the airport to where they were staying by helicopter, in the world's slowest and most boring car chase. The BBC merely joined in the race to the bottom, and would use the exact same defence as the tabloids would: that they were giving the public what they wanted.

And, it has to be said, the McCanns themselves fed the headlines.

They hired spokesmen, courted the cameras and at one stage flew to Rome to meet the Pope.

Who can blame them? They were desperate to keep the world focused on the search for their little girl.

Again, quite true: from the moment the McCanns went all out with the media hunt the chances of finding their daughter seemed to decline immeasurably. Making your missing child the most famous face in Europe, if not the best part of the world, is not necessarily the best way to find her. They however did this for the best possible reasons: the media regardless chewed them up and spat them out.

Despite all this, Gerry McCann still believes in freedom of speech.

Which is more than can be said for Max Mosley who wants EU-style privacy laws.

Britain already has draconian libel laws and self-regulation. It also has the Press Complaints Commission where issues are resolved swiftly and cheaply, without £500-an-hour lawyers.

The last thing we need is unelected judges censoring the truth about scandalous conduct among the Great and the Good.

And so we get to the real reason for this tortuous leader. McCann incidentally said much the same as Mosley, with he too wanting far tighter regulation. Mosley's demands also fall short of a fully-fledged privacy law: fundamentally he wants those who are going to be featured in exposes like the one he found himself at the centre of to be informed before they go to publication, which is simply common courtesy, so they can then challenge that publication in the courts. In Mosley's case this would have meant that the NotW would not have been published the story in the form it was; it still probably could have splashed on his antics, just not with the fabricated Nazi angle, although again he still could have challenged it on invasion of privacy grounds. It's also true we have draconian libel laws, but as has been argued repeatedly by myself, the PCC is for the most part toothless. To pretend that it's a completely competent and strong regulator is a nonsense, as the McCann case comprehensively proved. Those who respected and feared it would never have published the articles they did in the first place, and the fact that those who subsequently sued firmly rejected going to it with their complaints, and that the McCanns themselves were apparently advised by Christopher Meyer to launch legal action is hardly a vote of confidence in its abilities. Fundamentally, the Sun realises that Mosley threatens their business model: they rely on the scandals and the sex concerning the dregs of the celebrity world which has no real public interest. Exposing the real great and good often is in the public interest.

The chances in any event of any change to the law, which is what it will require rather than rulings by judges, are incredibly slim. That the Sun felt the need to defend itself in print, something it very rarely does, suggests that perhaps it isn't that unthinkable after all.

Alfie, the Sun and the PCC

From the PCC...

The Press Complaints Commission has announced an inquiry into alleged payments by The Sun and the People to the parents of Alfie Patten.

Apparently, no-one has complained, the Commission has decided to look into this itself with reference to Clause 6 of the code...

"Minors must not be paid for material involving children's welfare, nor parents or guardians for material about their children or wards, unless it is clearly in the child's interests".

Which it is allowed to do, and fair enough really, considering the subject matter and the age of the boy.


(reference)

The Sun under investigation

For the record...

The Guardian:

The Press Complaints Commission is investigating a front-page story in the Sun newspaper that claimed Islamic extremists were targeting The Apprentice star Sir Alan Sugar.
...
It is understood that the Sun story originated from a news agency.

The Sun declined to comment on why it had removed the story from its website.

Via

Blueprint for suicide

The Sun, along with most other national papers and a couple of London-centric papers, both online and paper versions, is in trouble with the PCC again.

Source

Complainant Name: Press Complaints Commission

Clauses Noted: 5

Publication: The Sun website

Complaint:

The Press Complaints Commission has investigated whether an article published on The Sun website on 20th November 2008 headlined “Suicide by chainsaw” contained excessive detail about the method of suicide used in breach of Clause 5 (Intrusion into grief or shock) of the Code.

The Commission found a breach of the Code.

The article reported the suicide of a man, who had taken his own life using a chainsaw. It contained a long and graphic reference to the method of suicide. It set out the precise apparatus that had been constructed by the individual to enable his suicide.
The newspaper accepted that the detail in the online version was excessive. It was therefore removed immediately.

Decision: Upheld

Adjudication:

Clause 5 (ii) was introduced specifically to prohibit the inclusion of detail that would act, in effect, as a blueprint for the method of a suicide. It is crucial that newspapers abide by its terms, in order to minimise the risk of copycat suicides. This means that, particularly in inquest reports (many of which will be provided by external agencies), care needs to be taken in the editing process to remove excessive detail.
On this occasion, the online article contained far too much detail and had not been sufficiently edited. It was a matter of concern that the newspaper had allowed the material to be published on its website. The Commission expected that the situation would not be repeated, as this was a clear breach of the Code.

The online article has, obviously, been altered now so there is no specific details in it anymore.

The explanation in the email notification also had this note that I couldn't find online

The Commission acknowledged that the information in the reports, all of which had been heard at the inquest into the man's death, had been provided to the newspapers by a news agency. However, this was not a sufficient defence. Indeed, this case demonstrated the importance of the editing process in removing excessive detail before publication - both online and offline.

Clarkson? Insensitive? Really?

The Mail failed to get Jeremy Clarkson out of the BBC, but maybe London's Greek community and the PCC will have more success getting him off the Sun's staff-list.

The London Daily News:

The BBC Top Gear and Sun columnist Jeremy Clarkson angered the Greek population of the United Kingdom with racist and insensitive comments made in his weekly newspaper column in the Saturday edition of The Sun, were describes Greece as a "toilet".

In an article "Holiday ad cuts a'tache" Clarkson refers to a recent campaign by the Greek National Tourist board in London, were a women is pictured with Clarkson referring "and a girl who didn’t look all that Greek either. She didn’t have a moustache for instance".

Clarkson referred recently to lorry drivers murdering prostitutes and was given a warning by the BBC, but to insult an entire nation in this manner is way off the mark.

The London Daily News has formally written to the editor of The Sun and a formal complaint is being made to the Press Complaints Commission which has strict guidelines over accuracy:

"i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information, including pictures.

iii) The Press, whilst free to be partisan, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact."

Had these comments been made about Muslims or African-Caribbean’s there would have been calls for Clarkson immediate dismissal in any case The Sun has not made any remedy to date.

The London Daily News calls for Clarkson to be sacked from The Sun for making these comments

The waiting game

Just a quickie from teh Eye, issue 1221.
It is just a small example of sticking to the letter of the PCC code rather than the spirit.



And if you fancy more adventures of the Sun with the PCC, then Septicisle, our politics and ethics editor, has a post on his own blog involving the Sun, homosexuals, a paratrooper and the Telegraph, although not all in the same complaint.

Paedophile hysteria, the Sun and the Press Complaints Commission.

Outside of the realms of hypocrisy for once and instead onto the Sun's journalistic ethics, or lack thereof. Posted today on their site is a Press Complaints Commission adjudication of a story it ran back in February (the adjudication is yet to appear on the PCC's own website):

"A woman complained to the Press Complaints Commission on behalf of her son that audio visual footage published on The Sun’s website on February 21 had been obtained in breach of Clause 10 (Clandestine devices and subterfuge) of the Code.

The complaint was upheld.

The complainant said that her son had been convicted in 2007 for possession of internet pornography. Although her son had been put on the Sex Offenders Register, the judge did not restrict his movements.

However, a journalist had secretly filmed him working in a supermarket, and had obtained a photograph of him making a delivery to a nursery school kitchen, which her son had done under instruction without breaking any rules.

The newspaper published an article on the subject, and placed the video footage on its website.

The newspaper said that there was a clear public interest. The use of subterfuge in obtaining the audiovisual footage was acceptable, as it was the only way of showing readers the complainant’s son at work in the store.

That said, the newspaper removed the footage from its website and undertook not to reuse it, unless there was a clear public interest to do so.

Adjudication

The Commission concluded that there was a considerable public interest justification for the story as a whole, given that the complainant’s son had made a delivery – as part of his job – to a children’s nursery following his conviction for distributing, making and possessing pornographic images of children.

The newspaper was entitled to highlight, and comment robustly on, this situation.

It was more difficult, however, to justify the taking and use of the audiovisual footage of the complainant’s son at work in the supermarket, given that the public interest element of the story related only to the delivery to the nursery.

The Commission has always said that there must be a powerful public interest justification for the use of undercover filming. On this occasion, there was no dispute that he worked for the supermarket, and the footage was not necessary to prove it.

There was therefore insufficient justification for the subterfuge, and the result was a breach of Clause 10 of the Code on this one specific point.

The Commission rejected other points of complaint about the article itself, which also appeared in the newspaper."

The original report is still on the Sun's website here (isn't it wonderful what putting paedophile+supermarket+nursery into Google brings up?) while the Salisbury Journal has a similar article, based on the Sun's, here.

It's immediately clear from the Sun article that the PCC adjudication is completely correct and that it could hardly have come to a different conclusion; Spencer is quite clearly wearing Sainsbury's uniform in the photograph. Why it felt the need to trail him around the supermarket itself is a mystery: is it being too cynical to wonder whether the Sun was hoping to catch him leering at a child or otherwise while he went about his work, or did so to identify the specific Sainsbury's where he was employed? It perhaps based its story around this one from just under a week earlier, where it "exposed" another paedophile working for a supermarket, this time Tesco, and in this case the video, again apparently taken through subterfuge, is still available.

Where I differ from the PCC is on whether this genuinely was in the public interest. Perhaps it could be justified if it was an article in the local paper, but this is in a national. What do the good burghers of almost anywhere other than Wiltshire care that a man with a conviction for possession of child pornography made a delivery to a nursery along with another worker? The other worker is perhaps key to the whole public interest question. If Spencer had made the delivery on his own, then perhaps it could be justified. As it is, any possibility that Spencer would have had any opportunity to abduct or abuse a child is rendered far more unlikely.

The publishing of the article raises a lot more ethical questions also. I'm sure everyone's aware of Sun editor Rebekah Wade's history, having started the notorious "name and shame" campaign whilst editor of the News of the World, resulting in anti-paedophile protests in Portsmouth and in a paediatrician having her house vandalised, so this sort of "expose" is par for the course. But what purpose exactly is it meant to achieve? While we don't know how severe the abuse (if any physical was depicted) in the 283 images he had in his possession were, the relatively light sentence he received, without any restrictions on his movements suggest that it was regarded at the less serious end of the scale. Certainly the fact that Sainsbury's kept him on, where you would expect he would come into contact with children, suggests that they also didn't regard him as any great threat. Indeed, why is the fact that he visited a nursery at all regarded as some sort of big no-no which shouldn't be crossed? If we're supposed to fear that he might have abducted or abused a child while there, why are we also not afraid that he might do the same when he's not working, or just out on the street, where he's far more likely to come across children alone or without supervision whom would be far easier to kidnap or take advantage of?

Fundamentally, what I'm attempting to address is how we deal with paedophiles as a whole. The Sun's take is pretty transparent: that they should be dealt with as harshly as possible, kept away from all children in much the same fashion, and only work in jobs where they are unlikely to come in contact with them. The question ought to be how do we rehabilitate them or help them rejoin society after such a conviction. The problem is that some, including it seems the Sun, seem to think that such a conviction means that they can be dismissed as sub-human, shunned, and in some cases denied work all together because of their past. The other approach, rather than forcing them underground, seems to be the one which Spencer and Sainsbury's in this case seem to have followed. Which is it that is likely to be more dangerous?

To be clear, I'm by no means in favour of the kind of censorship that would mean the Sun couldn't publish the story again tomorrow if it wanted to. What I do favour is examining the ethics involved in such a story and, when they seem, like in this case, to be lacking, to be heavily critical. To get a taste for the kind of thought which the Sun's story fomented, you only have to look at the comments:

"This is where supervision fails. All those convicted of child related offences should be tagged and monitored via a satelite tracking system. If they enter a forbidden zone (eg. School, nursery etc) they could be picked up immediately by police."

"They reckon for every 1 convicted there are 10 unknown perverts.when ever i am out with my 3 youngsters i am constantly watching every bloke who glances at my kids, but what can you do? You cant lock em up cause there are no prison spaces. So you have to let them get on with a normal life, and in that normal life they are going to come into contact with kids, so what's the answer? CASTRATE them, thats what they should do"

"Paedo's should not be given a job where they come into contact or go near any children. Tesco deliver my shopping and my children help the man unload the shopping from the van. I would be up in arms if I found out he was a paedo.

Children's safety and wellbeing must come first."

"Once a perv, always a perv! very dangerous sitation to be placed in. How would the conversation go, hey little girl come to the nice sainsbury man!"

"But yes, I think they should all be tagged, they should all have a marking on there head, so everyone knows what they have done, and they are easy to identify."

Although it must be noted there were a couple of dissenters.

Actually perhaps there is hypocrisy here after all: here's Lorraine Kelly from a few weeks back complaining about how we can't comfort a needy child:

"In the 14 years since my child was born, a sinister and almost hysterical mind-set has come into force. It is one that rigidly adheres to the belief that all adults are predatory beasts and there is a paedophile on every street in Britain."

I wonder which newspaper and editor helped to foster this "sinister and almost hysterical mind-set"?

And seeing as we're here, here's La Kelly in the aftermath of the Josef Fritzl case:

"The Austrian police should have a massive recruitment drive and set up a special unit to search every single cellar in their entire country. Who knows what more vile horrors would be revealed." The cops should "start arming themselves with pickaxes, torches and strong stomachs and start searching those cellars".

Oh, and the very same commentator on the dangers to your kids while away from home:

"Without becoming paranoid and wrapping your children in cotton wool, you have to be aware they can be in MORE danger on holiday than at home. Child molesters haunt holiday camps, theme parks and family resorts. You need to be on your guard."