By Gabriel princewill
British Press watchdog, Ipso have found a paper guilty of inaccurate reporting, after it published a story accusing a man of stalking, despite the fact the had been convicted for harassment in a Magistrate Court.
The Harassment Act 1997 legally describes harassment as pursuing a conduct that causes alarm and distress, which he knows or ‘ought to know’ amounts to harassment, and which a reasonable man in possession of all the information would conclude the behaviour as amounting to harassment.
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A defence to the allegation can be substantiated if the conduct is in accordance to any rule of law and can be shown to have been for a ‘reasonable purpose’.
The law on stalking is not dissimilar, but defined along subjective lines of what amounts to stalking. Outlined examples include following a person, contacting, or attempting to contact, a person by any means, and most pertinently, spying on a person(without justifiable or defensible grounds)
The Uk government website though, ambiguously describes stalking as more aggressive than harassment, with the stalker having ‘an obsession for the person they are stalking’.
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Ipso’s ruling in this somewhat contentious case as far its ruling on the reporting of the offence is concerned, was presented to The Eye Of Media.Com for analysis and debate by a group of female analysts, because of the feeling that the conduct for which the man was convicted, indeed amounted to stalking, and therefore ought not be played down by semantics.
The underpinning complication underlying an objective assessment of the ruling was the fact an initial charge sheet of stalking by the Crown Prosecution Service(CPS) had been dropped and substituted for harassment.
Beyond dispute was Ipso’s finding of inaccurate reporting by The South Wales Guardian, since the news outlet had wrongly stated the location the court hearing took place, though this was materially irrelevant to the main fact of the offence and its associated reporting in dispute.
The main dispute was whether it was correct for the South Wales Guardian to have described the complainants conduct as stalking when he was convicted for harassment after an earlier charge of stalking was dropped.
However, this issue was inevitably blurred by other inaccuracies and inexplicable omissions by the paper pertaining to the precise ruling of the court.
Allegation Of Breach
Philip Raeburn complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that southwalesguardian.co.uk breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article headlined “Tycroes stalker found guilty by magistrates”, published on 8 March 2022.
The contested article reported on the complainant’s court case, the headline describing him as a “stalker” who had been found guilty by magistrates.
Ipso correctly pointed out that the article failed to state the specific offence of which the complainant had been found guilty; but rather reported that he had been found guilty of “pursuing and pestering a woman despite her wishes to avoid all contact with him” by “Llanelli magistrates”.
The aggrieved complainant said that the article was inaccurate in breach of Clause 1, pointing out that he had originally been charged with stalking, assault, and criminal damage, but that those charges were dropped after his first hearing, and he was instead charged and eventually convicted of “harassment without violence”.
The complainant supplied his charge sheet to support his claim, arguing that assertion he was a “stalker”, as this was a separate and more serious charge which the court had dropped.
IPSO stated that the term featured in the headline was also visible in search engine results and when the post was shared on social media.
The further embarrassment to the publication following its error in reporting that Mr. Raeburn had been tried in Llanelli Magistrates Court, when the correct position was that the hearing took place at West Glamorgan Magistrates Court in Swansea accentuated its failure to take care to publish accurate information, one of the key pillars of Ipso’s code on inaccuracy.
The publication rejected a breach of the Code, arguing that the headline was drawn from the charge the complainant had been found guilty of in court.
Also unhelpful to the publication’s defence was its inability to corroborate its claim to have taken the story from court documents using an online service, because it no longer had access to the service.
The South Wales Guardian reasonably argued that the headline was accurate as it considered the word “stalker” was not misleading where the complainant had been found guilty of harassment and where it said stalking could be defined as persistent and unwanted attention that makes the victim feel pestered and harassed.
Yet, hoe stalking can be defined and the legal offence attributed to a defendant in a court of law , are two different things. More so in the face of other omissions in the reporting.
The publication’s refusal to amend the headline of the online article until nearly three weeks after the complainant sent it his charge sheet, and 10 days after IPSO referred the matter as a possible breach of the Editors’ Code was implicitly deemed an oversight by the press regulator.
The publication eventually added a correction to the online article and amended the reference to Llanelli in the text. It added the following correction: A previous version of this article headlined ‘Tycroes stalker found guilty by magistrates’, published on March 8, was incorrect. In fact, the charge of stalking was dropped. The case was also heard at Swansea Magistrates and not Llanelli, as previously stated. We are happy to clarify.
Ipso highlighted the relevant clause provision under clause 1 that the
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence should be as required by the regulator.
iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies should be given, when reasonably called for.
iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
The Committee pointed out that because the charge of “harassment without violence” was not referred to in the article itself, readers were not able to ascertain what crime the complainant had been found guilty of, nor that the separate charge of stalking had been dropped.
‘As such, the characterisation of the complainant as a “stalker” was misleading as to the nature of his conviction. This represented a failure to take care not to print inaccurate information and was therefore in breach of Clause 1(i), Ipso said.
In addition, the committee pointed out that the fact the article had reported that the complainant had been tried in Llanelli magistrates rather than Swansea Magistrates’ Court – this was clearly inaccurate as per the complainant’s conviction and charge sheet and represented a breach of Clause 1(i).
The Committee considered that misreporting the complainant’s conviction and the court at which it had been handed down were significant inaccuracies and therefore assessed whether the corrective action taken by the publication was sufficient to avoid a breach of Clause 1(ii).
The Committee found that because the correction which appeared below the headline and addressed both inaccuracies was only published two months after the publication was made aware of the correct position, the Committee found the correction was not sufficiently prompt, and there was a breach of Clause 1(ii).
Where the publication had taken steps to mitigate the effects of the breach by offering to publish a correction, the Committee considered that the appropriate remedy was the publication of a further correction, rather than an upheld adjudication.
Mr. Raehman’s successful complaint nevertheless raises interesting issues raises an important point as to the extent to which harassment is distinguishable from stalking because the two acts can often be used interchangeably, the difference depending on the details and facts of the case.
West Glamorgan Magistrates Court has been contacted for fuller details of the case for further examination in public interest.
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