Reasons to dislike the British press #343

[ThunderPeel2001]

Taken from Graham Linehan's blog (he sums it up much better than I could!):

The Dunblane Massacre was an atrocity almost beyond imagining. A man named Thomas Hamilton walked into a school in a small Scottish town in March 1996, and shot dead sixteen children and one teacher. It was not what we’ve since come to think of as a ‘normal’ school shooting as it was a primary school, and all the children were aged between five and six years of age.

Paula Murrary is a journalist for the Sunday Express who thought it was well past time that the survivors of the Dunblane massacre were given a tabloid punching. To that end, she befriended a group of them on Facebook and collated their photographs and comments. Clearly aware of the legal guidelines in place to protect those under eighteen against invasion of privacy (and the specific instructions that the Press Complaints Commission issued regarding the Dunblane children), she waited until they hit eighteen.

Then she wrote this. Under the headline “SICK MESSAGES SHAME MEMORY OF CLASSMATES”, referring to the normal, teenagery stuff they were saying to each other on their profiles, the gist of the story is that these kids are showing disrespect to their dead classmates by… being alive.

Here’s an example of Paula’s scoop:

“For instance, [name deleted], who was hit by a single bullet and watched in horror as his classmates died, makes rude gestures in pictures he posted on his Bebo site, and boasts of drunken nights out.”

Rude gestures. Boasting. Drunkenness.

Complaints to the PCC have been made by two of the victims of the article, the piece has been pulled from the Express website… so we should probably forget about it, right?

I don’t know. I think the line that has been crossed here is different to all the other lines the press routinely cross.

The press likes us to believe they’re a properly regulated body, but they’re anything but. The PCC, unlike Ofcom and the Advertising Standards Authority (who have easy-to-use complaint forms on their websites) don’t even accept third party complaints -- in other words, unless you are the person named in a printed article, they’re not interested in hearing your opinion.

So when faced with an affront to our humanity (which is what I believe this Express story is), there is no official channel for us to register our anger. That’s right - if you are offended by something on TV, Radio or in an advert, you can complain; if you’re offended by something in the print press…well, you’re just going to have to walk it off, because literally no-one wants to know.

So, I think it is up to us to take a stand for those kids who had their privacy so ruthlessly invaded. Paula Murray set out to do a hit job on those kids– character assassination (of the most pathetic, intelligence-insulting kind) was the aim, and the weapons were a Facebook account and an editor with a moral centre as atrophied as her own. If there is a line beyond that one that the press can cross, I think we should make it harder for them to do so.

So! What can we do? Here are a few suggestions:

Sign the petition...

http://www.ipetitions.com/petition/sundayexpress/

Matt Nida started this petition and when he’s got a decent number of names, he’ll be submitting it to the editor responsible for the story, the publishers and managing directors of Express Group Newspapers, the PCC, Downing Street and all media outlets who may be able to help shame the Express Group into action by making public the strength of national feeling about this.

2) Email your personal complaint to the Editorial Director of the Express Group about the conduct of Paula Murray and Scottish Sunday Express, Derek Lambie, who was responsible for placing the piece on the front cover. The Editorial Director is Paul Ashford, and this is his secretary’s email address, so please try to avoid being abusive to her - it’s not her fault! - and preface your email by asking Jo to pass your letter on to Mr Ashford. Jo.dimond@express.co.uk

3) Write to Express Group publisher Richard Desmond. He keeps his email address well hidden, but you can write to him by snail mail at: Richard Desmond, Northern and Shell building, 10 Lower Thames Street, London EC3R 6EN

[Nachimir]

Wow. I hope she never works again. Or perhaps gets hung from a lamp post.

[Nappi]

That is some stunning journalism.

[DanJW]

Hmm, yeah I saw this on facebook and signed the petition. Pretty awful thing to do.

[Salka]

What's especially cruel is that they got people from within their community to speak out against them. I'm pretty sure the journalist manipulated them into saying things with clever wording, and the resulting quotes must be so hurtful to those kids. Really unbelievable.

[SignorSuperdouche]

Well, they have issued an apology, but it's an issue dodging, face saving apology that basically boils down to "we're sorry that we got lots of bad publicity" not "we're sorry that we did something terrible".

I'm actually pretty shocked that you can only complain about a printed article unless you are personally involved in the story. I'd just sort of assumed it was covered by Ofcom.

[elmuerte]

Well, they have issued an apology, but it's an issue dodging, face saving apology that basically boils down to "we're sorry that we got lots of bad publicity" not "we're sorry that we did something terrible".

Apologies mean nothing when you did something on purpose.

[n0wak]

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[gdf]

Signed that petition, pissing awful. So many people here read that sort of shitty paper every week. Their apology was a fucking abomination as well.

Apparently, having fun makes you a bad person.

[elmuerte]

Apparently, having fun makes you a bad person.

Man,... I must be worse than by now

(using the emoticon in order to try to avoid Godwin)

[Thrik]

Teeeee:

http://www.bloggerheads.com/archives/2009/03/paula_murray_drinks.asp

[SignorSuperdouche]

I've been mulling this over and I'm not too sure what to think. I read the article (I found a copy of Page 1) and had a look at the PCCs Code of Practice and I'm not entirely sure any of the rules were, strictly speaking, broken.

There were two parts that I thought were possibly relevant:

1 Accuracy

i) The press must take care not to publish

inaccurate, misleading or distorted

information, including pictures.

The quotes from the social networking may well be reasonable representations of the teenagers (they seemed pretty average sounding to me, so quite possibly), but if they were cherry picked does that qualify as "misleading or distorted information", even if they were accurately quoted?

MSP Elizabeth Smith claims her quote was taken out of context. This seems the most likely candidate for "distorted information", but a politicians words taken out of context is, to me, the least worrying aspect of the article. If the PCC just came down on the Express for this, it would't address the major issues I have with the story.

3* Privacy

i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or

her private and family life, home, health

and correspondence, including digital

communications. Editors will be expected to

justify intrusions into any individual's private

life without consent.

The key part here is obviously "without consent". Adding the reporter as a friend on a social networking site seems to be a pretty reasonable form of consent to view their page. I'm not sure how to get around that fact.

If the current regulations aren't enough to stop this sort of exploitation, how can we tighten them so that they are without restricting legitimate investigative journalism? Should journalists have to identify themselves a journalists? Should they have to indicate that they are researching an article? This would completely undermine investigative journalism very important role it plays in a free society.

It's late and I'm quite tired so I maybe missing something obvious, but it seems to me that as abhorrent as it is we can't really regulate against this sort of thing without doing more harm than good. The best thing we can do is stop buying tabloid rags, but then I, nor anyone I know, buys them anyway.

[gdf]

I just want her to fuck off and die.

It's not like these circumstances occur regularly, and obviously if it didn't strictly break the code of conduct then it should be assessed on its own merits. Is this an affront to decent journalistic behaviour? Yes, punish those responsible accordingly. Though it's true that the regulations should perhaps be clarified, good research there

I'd also argue that adding someone as a friend doesn't really count as consent to effectively lie to them, creep about their page extracting information selectively and then publish it in a newspaper. A lot of my peers accept anyone who tries to add them just as a matter of course, and it's usually afterwards that they block them. Even my sister, who's usually pretty sensible with this sort of stuff, accepts basically anyone unconditionally on both social networks and IM. Not a great idea, perhaps, but there's no way that could be called consent.

Even if it did, she should be reprimanded for intent. She went to their pages with the latent notion of gaining personal information which could then be used as a character assassination with a tenuous link to a decade old tragedy and then call it news, or investigative reporting. Surely there's something inherently fucking nasty about that which can be dealt with by the PCC.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Wow, my fellow Thumbs are rather cool

It's not all about Murray, though, and I'd hate her to take all the blame. Her editors Derek Lambie and Paul Ashford are equally responsible, perhaps even more so - they didn't have to print what she had written and they didn't have to put it on the front page, either.

I hope the PCC do something about this, but I'm pretty sure Paula Murray is probably fearing for her life about now, given all the abuse that's been sent to directly to her. I'd rather let the "authorities" deal with the situation... I just hope they actually do.

SignorSuperDouche: I don't think that Jonathan Ross or Russell Brand technically broke any rules, either. I wonder how the PCC will deal with mounting public complaints...

[SignorSuperdouche]

It's not all about Murray, though, and I'd hate her to take all the blame. Her editors Derek Lambie and Paul Ashford are equally responsible, perhaps even more so - they didn't have to print what she had written and they didn't have to put it on the front page, either.

Good point. It's even quite possible that the article was thought up by one of her editors and Murray just had the bad luck of being given the assignment. Not that that would make her blameless, but she shouldn't bare full responsibility.

Going over the PCCs Code of Practice again I noticed I had missed this bit:

It is essential that an agreed code be honoured not only to the letter but in the full spirit. It should not

be interpreted so narrowly as to compromise its commitment to respect the rights of the individual,

nor so broadly that it constitutes an unnecessary interference with freedom of expression or prevents

publication in the public interest.

I think that the story definitely goes against the "full spirit" of the code, so yeah, PCC is entitled to spank some bottoms here.

[OssK]

Don't really know the legislation on your side of the channel but can a journalist publish anything private about a non-adult ?

[brkl]

These were adults.

[ThunderPeel2001]

Don't really know the legislation on your side of the channel but can a journalist publish anything private about a non-adult ?

Remember the bit in the original post about them just turning 18?

[ThunderPeel2001]

I think that the story definitely goes against the "full spirit" of the code, so yeah, PCC is entitled to spank some bottoms here.

Nice job with the research, it's quite interesting to learn more... No to see what happens

[James]

UNORIGINAL POINT ALERT:

It's pretty daft that an industry that in no small sense sustains itself on moral indignation is itself frequently so repugnant and near-psychopathic. People who were once shot at are made of the same fallible and ordinary stuff as the rest of us.

Also: Fuck, is Screenwipe back? I keep forgetting to look out for that sort of thing. Newswipe? Is that a spin-off affair?

[Ben X]

UNORIGINAL POINT ALERT:

Also: Fuck, is Screenwipe back? I keep forgetting to look out for that sort of thing. Newswipe? Is that a spin-off affair?

No Screenwipe, but yeah the spin-off Newswipe has just started. You can see the first ep on BBC iplayer, it's really good (although he repeats a fair bit of material from his Guardian column, as usual).