Fishburn Hedges

24.11.2011

On 22 November 2011, the Press Complaints Commission published a ruling on accuracy (Editors' Code, clause 1), which indicates that it may be taking a more robust approach with its newspaper paymasters. Here, David Engel, partner at Addelshaw Goddard, outlines some of the key issues under debate.

In Antoniou v Woman Magazine, Mr Antoniou complained about an article written by his former wife giving her account of the couple's custody dispute over their son.  The article focused in particular on her decision to take the child from Cyprus to the UK for medical treatment without Mr Antoniou's consent. 

At the time of publication, Mrs Antoniou was facing charges in Cyprus of kidnapping (in relation to the removal of the child) and soliciting to aid and abet murder (in relation to allegations that she had hired a hit man to kill her former husband). 

Nonetheless, the magazine did not consider that it should put to Mr Antoniou a number of claims made by his ex-wife about the custody dispute.  The magazine said that it had not contacted him before publication because the article did not accuse him of any "specific wrongdoing".  It had, however, checked Mrs Antoniou's version of events with her mother, who had referred to letters from doctors which were said to support her daughter's version of events. 

The PCC upheld Mr Antoniou's complaint, emphasising that the failure to contact him before publication of "serious claims" was a failure to take care under clause 1: "Newspapers and magazines will often need to put significant claims to interested parties both to help establish the veracity of the allegations and to make readers aware of alternative versions of events.  This is part of taking 'care not to publish inaccurate information'".

This suggests that the PCC is seeking to hold the press to a higher standard of pre-publication conduct and one closer to that applied by the Courts in libel cases when a newspaper seeks to rely on a 'responsible journalism' defence of Reynolds qualified privilege (Reynolds v Times Newspapers Limited), under which the press are required to put allegations to the subject of a story before publication if they are to have the protection of that defence. 

The PCC's finding on remedies is also interesting.  Often, when the PCC is dealing with a clause 1 complaint, it will not uphold the complaint if the publisher has offered some form of remedy, even if that remedy is not what the complainant wants, for example (as in this case) a published letter, a further article from the complainant's perspective, and/or a private letter of apology.

Here, the PCC made it clear that the offer of such remedies was not "sufficient to remedy the breach of the Code".  

This all indicates that the PCC appears to be keener than previously to demonstrate that it can still play a part in enforcing standards of journalism.

Written by David Engel

 

David leads the reputation protection and media litigation team at Addelshaw Goddard, specialising in media crisis management, defamation, privacy and confidentiality, as well as the protection of rights and reputation online.

He is identified in both the Legal 500 and Chambers directories as a "leading individual" in the reputation protection, defamation and privacy field.

He also advises on general commercial litigation, and in particular on disputes involving hedge fund managers as leader of the firm's HedgeDefence team.

David adjudicates on UK domain name disputes as an Independent Expert for the Nominet dispute resolution procedure.

He is a contributor to Computer Law  and to The A-Z of IT and e-business Compliance. His articles have appeared in various publications, including The Times, International Media Law, European Lawyer, Hedge Funds Review, Hedge Fund Manager Week, Computer Bulletin, Copyright World, Entertainment Law Review and Communications Law.  He is on the editorial board of Computer Law & Security Report.