The Press Complaints Commission yesterday censured the Scottish News of the World. The paper had to publish an adjudication (which appeared on page 2) after an article which accused a seven year old child of anti social behaviour and criminal activity.
The child’s parents, and members of the local community provided evidence undermining some of the claims in the article – particularly that he had been expelled from a number of schools (he had not).
The PCC ruled against the newspaper on for a breach of the code on accuracy (clause one) and children (clause six).
However, the ruling was not straightforward. On the basis of the evidence available, I believe that the Scottish News of the World was unfairly censured and should have the right of appeal. Here’s why.
The PCC’s adjudication is only 127 words long – less than half the average length of recent adjudications. That means it’s difficult to identify all of the different factors in its decision. However, from the information that is available, the PCC’s adjudication appears to be inconsistent with previous cases.
The ruling against the accuracy of the boy’s truancy appears to be justified. The boy’s parents provided clear evidence to refute the claim and the newspaper did not. However, the ruling against the claims of anti social behaviour is less clear cut. Whilst the parents galvanised the support of 100 local people, the newspaper had a diary of his behaviour from local residents, letters from local politicians as well as three interventions from the police that summer. The PCC is not there to determine whether the newspaper was correct – just whether it had made reasonable efforts to ensure the accuracy of the article. On that basis, the Scottish News of the World appears to not have broken the code and its earlier offer of a right to reply would normally have been enough for the PCC – as it was in Peaches Geldof v Daily Star.
The second part of the PCC’s ruling deals with the fact that the case concerns a child. It is on this part of the code where the PCC’s ruling appears to be inconsistent with previous cases. Newspapers are allowed to report issues concerning children if there is a public interest in “exposing crime or serious impropriety”. In the case of Brian Souter and son v Scottish Sun the PCC rejected the complaint because criminal behaviour (the son stealing his father’s car) was not part of the child’s private life.
The Scottish News of the World further justified its coverage on the basis that it “had not named the child and taken care to obscure his identity”. Based on previous cases, this should have been enough to comply with the code. In A man v Northwich Guardian the PCC rejected the complaint on the basis that clause six was not intended to place “a blanket ban on publishing (childrens’) photographs or stories about them without their consent”. In two further cases the PCC rejected complaints because the newspaper did not publish information which was further detrimental to the child’s welfare (Carolyn Cunningham and Paul John Ferris v Daily Record) and because there was already information in the public domain (Ian Cooper v Cambridge News). The identity of the boy was clearly known by the 100 local residents who supported the complaint against the Scottish News of the World, so it is hard to understand how the newspaper revealed additional information (and the article is no longer available online).
That the case also took 15 months for the PCC to determine the outcome demonstrates that it was not straightforward. The PCC say that the average case is adjudicated within 35 days. It does not generally accept complaints that are made more than two months after publication of the article. The Scottish News of the World article appeared on 10 August 2008 and the adjudication appeared on 23 November 2009. So at the very least, this case took 400 days to assess.
This adjudication against the Scottish News of the World appears to be a threat to freedom of expression. If a newspaper cannot report a neighbour’s reports of anti social behaviour of a child (even if they pixellate the child’s face and try to obscure the identity) then many issues will go un-reported until they reach court. And one of the reasons for the introduction of anti social behaviour orders was the difficulty of bringing such issues to court.
The case may be more complicated than the adjudication reveals. It does make a passing reference to “the child’s medical condition”. But from the available information, the ruling is both at odds with the PCC’s previous decisions and a threat to the freedom of expression and the public’s right to know.
Related posts:
- What should the PCC do about the Sunday World front page suicide photo?
- Why Jan Moir and the Daily Mail will escape disciplinary action
- Press Complaints Commission’s farcical investigation of Keith Vaz affair
- Why Jan Moir’s apology shouldn’t be ‘case closed’
- Andreas Whittam Smith: right and wrong on press self-regulation reform
Tags: analysis, Press Complaints Commission, Scottish News of the World
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