Intrusion into grief or shock

Along with several other papers, today's Daily Mirror splash relates the sad story of Jemma Benjamin. The Welsh 18-year-old died in 2009, and yesterday the Aberdare coroner delivered a narrative verdict, which explains that she died from sudden adult death syndrome. SADs is the catch-all term for death caused by the heart failing for no discernable reason.

The press were particularly interested in Jemma's death because she collapsed while kissing a man - some papers have claimed it was her first-ever kiss, some have said the man was her boyfriend, others that he was just an acquaintence. So there are lots of unknowns and variables about this case, but one thing is certain - the Mirror's coverage is a crock of shit:

Yes, that headline really does read "KILLED BY HER FIRST KISS". It gets worse inside, where spread across page 11 is the headline "KISS OF DEATH". For the avoidance of doubt, the cause of death was not recorded as "being kissed".

Quite how this absurd sensationalism will go down with her family, let alone the man who kissed her, we can only speculate. We can also only speculate as to how the Mirror's editors thought these headlines fitted with with the PCC code - both its clause one demand for accuracy and the oft-ignored clause five:

5. Intrusion into grief or shock
i) In cases involving personal grief or shock, enquiries and approaches must be made with sympathy and discretion and publication handled sensitively. This should not restrict the right to report legal proceedings, such as inquests.

Clearly they'd thought better of it by the time the story went online, where the headline is much more sober and accurate.

It's been a busy week for "Killed by..." splashes in the Mirror - just yesterday they had this:

And back on 4 February they went with this:


Is "whacky attribution of death" becoming the Mirror's version of the Express's endless McCann family "stories" and the Star's creepy obsession with Jordan?

Stable v Littlejohn (part two in an ongoing series)

With a huge, huge hat-tip to Tabloid Watch for doing all the heavy lifting (go there now, read the blog, be amazed, go back tomorrow and be amazed again), this afternoon I pinged off another complaint about Richard Littlejohn to the PCC.

Last time I flagged up a made-up fact in a Littlejohn column the PCC excused him, apparetnly on the basis that he talks so much shit that everyone would know he was just joking about Afghan asylum seekers getting priority for council houses. This time he's based an entire section of his column around something that is simply not true. There's no question that this is a rhetorical device, he's just talking out of his arse.

I've decided that from now on I'm going to go down the PCC route every time Littlejohn lies in one of his columns - not every time I disagree with his view, but every time he publishes something that is simply made up and has no basis in truth.

It may never come to anything. The PCC may continue to claim that Littlejohn is entitled to make stuff up as he's a columnist. But I'm hoping that if I can generate enough paperwork for someone at Associated Newspapers, Littlejohn's bosses may finally get tired and ask him to start basing his columns on something other than his vivid imagination. I shan't be holding my breath, mind...

Here's what I sent to the PCC:

In his column last Friday, Richard Littlejohn criticised the Chief Constable of Suffolk for flying a gay pride flag outside his force's HQ building. The column included the following:

"No one would mind that much, I imagine, if Chief Constable Ash didn’t also ban the flying of the Union Flag outside ‘his’ police stations — presumably on the grounds that it’s ‘racist’. He is a sworn servant of the Crown, who has pledged allegiance to the monarch. Yet he refuses to fly the Union Flag even on the Queen’s birthday — or any other special occasion, for that matter."

This is demonstrably untrue. As a Suffolk police spokeswoman stated during an Anglia TV bulletin last week:

"This is not accurate. Both flags are flown from our headquarters."

You can view the clip online here: http://www.itv.com/anglia/flying-the-flag01326/

Further, the Suffolk Constabulary Policies & Procedures policyon the Use and Maintenance of Police Buildings reads:

"11.1 Police Headquarters and other stations with facilities for raising flags will fly the Union Flag on the following dates and on any special occasion notified: 6 February Accession of Her Majesty The Queen;19 February Birthday of Prince Andrew;10 March Birthday of Prince Edward; 21 April Birthday of Her Majesty The Queen; 23 April St George's Day"

And, as reported on the TabloidWatch blog, one individual who contacted Suffolk police about the "ban" on the Union Flag was told:

"...we would like to clarify that Suffolk Police, like every other force in England and Wales, does hoist the Union and St George Cross flags on appropriate days of the year. On other days, the force flag flies outside police stations and at force headquarters, but it is at the Chief Constable’s discretion as to when and if other flags are hoisted. There has never been any ban on flying the Union Flag on Suffolk Constabulary buildings as has been reported."

Littlejohn's claim that the Chief Constable had "banned" the flying of the Union Flag had no basis in truth, and is therefore a breach of sections 1(1) and 1(3) of the Editor's Code:

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.

Although Littlejohn's overall column was a piece of comment, the inaccurate and misleading claim regarding the alleged "ban" on flying flags was clearly presented as a fact.

A letter to the PCC

So you may have guessed that I wasn't too thrilled with the PCC's outright rejection of my complaint about Richard Littlejohn. Based on comments on the blog and on Twitter (not to mention the traffic figures for Primly Stable going through the roof - thanks for your support, everyone!), I wasn't the only person out there who was displeased. So this morning I replied to the PCC case officer. I'm not expecting to hear anything back, but what the hey...



Many thanks for your response.

While I accept that PCC rules mean I have no right to take this further, I have to say I am extremely disappointed with the decision. Essentially the PCC has said it is acceptable for newspapers to publish lies, provided they support the views of the columnist. And that is what Richard Littlejohn did in the column in question – he lied to his readers. To try and claim that he was making an ”amplified statement for rhetorical effect” to make a point about the state not helping people “who do the right thing” is absurd. He lied about the benefits on offer to immigrants and asylum seekers in a story about the plight of a homeless soldier, even though the two cases are entirely separate. This was not a “rhetorical device” in any recognised definition of the term. It was a naked attempt to blame foreigners for the lack of available council housing.

I’m also deeply suspicious of your claim that “readers would be aware that the columnist was not accurately reflecting the government’s policy on the housing of immigrants”. The Mail’s website also contains a news story about Lance Corporal Lance Corporal Craig Baker, the soldier at the centre of this issue. Comments from readers underneath the story include the following:

“He should just have told that council he was an illegal immigrant from Afghanistan....And he would have been housed immediately!!”

“expect no better from Bracknell Forest Council, because they are fast-tracking immigrants to the head of the housing queue ... just the same as all councils throughout Britain are daily doing”

“He should go back to Aghanistan, throw away his British passport and come back as a 'refugee'. Apartment in Mayfair awaits him.”

“Single mothers come on top of the list dont they plus foreigners”

“criag ,you should have lobbed your passport on the way back from afghanistan you would have gone way up the list”

“Why is it that the UK gives housing, benefits and anything else that migrants want.”

“Throw your passport away,make out you can't talk understand English. Answer?, the life of riley!!!!!!!!!!!1”

All of these comments have received hundreds of “positive” ratings from fellow Daily Mail readers, which rather suggests that they ARE NOT aware of the finer points of the government’s policy on the housing of immigrants. What evidence does the PCC have to support its view?

Had Littlejohn compared the soldier’s situation with, for example, a convicted criminal who had been released from prison and promptly housed in local authority accommodation than he may have had some grounds to claim that he was making a point about people who “do the right thing” losing out. But he didn’t. He chose to make something up entirely. To lie. And with this ruling the PCC has said such conduct is perfectly acceptable.

I had very little faith in the PCC’s ability to hold the media to account before this episode. Now I have none. The organisation proudly boasts of its rapid response to the shocking inaccuracy that led to one organisation being called “the first specialist thumb-sucking clinic in London” when in fact it was the second. But it is happy to give the seal of approval to a newspaper that publishes lies in order to whip up racial tensions.

I shall be sending copies of all our correspondence to my MP, along with a request for him to raise the issue of media self-regulation with the Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport.

PCC says it's OK to lie

So after a couple of months of pondering, the PCC have got around to replying to my complaint. You remember the one, where I pointed out that Richard Littlejohn was talking out of his arse when he claimed that "any Afghan climbing off the back of a lorry in Dover goes automatically to the top of the housing list"?

He said this despite the fact that it is simply not true - asylum seekers do not even join the housing queue and illegal immigrants (for fairly obvious reasons) aren't entitled to council houses and benefits at all. So Richard Littlejohn, who likes to portray himself as a man who speaks uncomfortable truths, made something up. He gave false information to his readers. He lied. And he did all this in an article that essentially blamed Afghan asylum seekers for the fact that an ex-soldier who served in Afghanistan couldn't get a council house, thus continuing the Mail's policy of whipping up anti-Muslim and anti-immigrant hatred based on misinformation.

The PCC code is very clear on such matters. Section one, clause one says:

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

And they've gone further on the subject of asylum seekers, issuing a note to editors that says:

"The Commission – in previous adjudications under Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code – has underlined the danger that inaccurate, misleading or distorted reporting may generate an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts."

So obviously after I pointed out that Littlejohn had published inaccurate, misleading or distorted information that generated an atmosphere of fear and hostility that is not borne out by the facts, there was only ever going to be one outcome:

Commission’s decision in the case of Stable v Daily Mail

 

The complainant considered that the article falsely stated that “Afghans climbing off the back of a lorry in Dover” were given precedence in the allocation of council housing.

 

The Commission acknowledged the complainant’s concern over the statement; however, it had to consider the remark in the context of the article in which it appeared. The article had been clearly presented as a comment piece, in which the columnist expressed his concern that a soldier who had served in Afghanistan had not been granted a council house. The Commission considered that the columnist had exaggerated and simplified the example of housing immigrants for the purpose of stressing his assertion that the “system of government exists simply to punish those who do the right thing”. It emphasised that the newspaper should take care when using such rhetorical methods of expression that readers would not be misled into understanding that they reflected statements of fact. In this instance, on balance it considered that readers would be aware that the columnist was not accurately reflecting the government’s policy on the housing of immigrants, but that he was making an amplified statement for rhetorical effect. It was therefore the Commission’s view that, on this occasion, readers generally would not be misled in such a way as to warrant correction under the terms of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

The covering letter notes that I can't complain about the decision or ask them to reconsider, but notes that they'll forward my letter to the editor. You couldn't make it up.

Now that the PCC has been quite clear that it's OK for journalists to lie for rhetorical effect, I think I'm on safe ground when I say that Richard Littlejohn is a fine, upstanding journalist, the Daily Mail is a wonderful publication whose employees can be proud to work for it, and that the Press Complaints Commission is an effective, relevant and entirely useful organisation that continues to make an excellent case for ongoing self-regulation of the UK media.