IPSO complaint written by a CMOMM member

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With best wishes,

I write further to our earlier email regarding your complaint about an article headlined “Madeleine McCann’s parents relieved as Portuguese cop axes controversial new book on case”, published by Mirror.co.uk on 8^th February 2017.

On receipt of a complaint, IPSO’s Executive reviews it to ensure that it falls within our remit, and discloses a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The Executive has now completed an assessment of your complaint under the terms of the Code. Having considered the points you have raised in full, we have concluded that your complaint does not raise a possible breach of the Code.

Your complaint was made under Clause 1 (Accuracy). You said that it was inaccurate to state that the Inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance “cleared Kate and Gerry of any wrongdoing”. You provided news articles in support of your complaint which reported that the Portuguese civil court has said the removal of their status as persons of interest did not amount to being cleared of any wrongdoing.

The status of the McCanns as persons of interest was lifted in 2008. The newspaper was entitled to characterise the removal of this status as being cleared of any wrongdoing in the absence of any official determination on the issue of their guilt or innocence. We did not therefore consider that the article was significantly inaccurate, and did not consider that your complaint raised a possible breach of Clause 1.

You are entitled to request that the Executive’s decision to reject your complaint be reviewed by IPSO’s Complaints Committee. To do so you will need to write to us in the next seven days, setting out the reasons why you believe the decision should be reviewed. Please note that we are unable to accept requests for review made seven days after the date of this email.

We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider the points you have raised, and have shared this correspondence with the newspaper to make it aware of your concerns.

Best wishes,

Alistair Henwood
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This prompted my appeal which was filed on the 27th April 2017:

Sir/Madam,
My original complaint comprised of two main points which are actually the same point, but from the IPSO response appear to have been misrepresented so for clarification I will now list the two points of complaint:
1)       I said that it was inaccurate to state that the Inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance “cleared Kate and Gerry of any wrongdoing”.  This was stated in my original complaint and also the one point focused on by the IPSO given your response.
2)       I also stated and reiterated “any media outlet that prints that the McCann’s were cleared in 2008 upon archiving of the case” is wrong to do so.
 
To support this I included links to 3 Daily Mirror articles which are;
1)       [url=http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/uk-news/madeleine-mccanns-parents-relieved-portuguese-10141308 from April 1st 2017][/url][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] from April 1st 2017  In this link the offending quote is printed “Amaral’s first book was published three days after Portuguese authorities closed the inquiry into Madeleine’s disappearance in 2008 and cleared Gerry and Kate of any wrong doing”.  For the purposes of my complaint I think this quote can be reduced down to the following “Portuguese closed the inquiry in 2008 and cleared Kate and Gerry”.
2)       [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] In this link is the following quote “Kate and Gerry McCann slammed judges who said the lifting of their arguidos status was not the same thing as ruling them innocent”.
3)       [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] In this link is this quote ““It should not be said that the appellants were cleared via the ruling announcing the archiving of the criminal case”.
 
For further corroborating evidence I submitted this link to you [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] This link contains all of the official Portuguese court system documentation that the McCann’s V Mr Amaral case has been involved in, including the more recent Supreme Court ruling in its entirety for your information when assessing the validity of the Daily Mirror’s quotes from the same documents.  From your response it is plain to see that you accept these documents exist and that they are the ultimate guide for your information in deciding upon breaches of your Code of Practice.  For matters of convenience here is a link to the Supreme Court documents that have been translated into English [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].  This link will take you directly to page 70 of the Portuguese Supreme Court ruling documents in which you will find the following quotes:
1)      “And let it not be said, too, that the appellants were cleared by the order of filing the criminal proceedings”.
2)      “Thus it does not appear acceptable to consider that the alluded dispatch, based on the insufficiency of evidence, should be treated as evidence of innocence”.
 
With this in mind I will now include a quote from your response to me which appears to be the deciding factor in rejecting my initial complaint; “The newspaper was entitled to characterise the removal of this status as being cleared of any wrongdoing in the absence of any official determination on the issue of their guilt or innocence”.  There are a few serious problems with your response here namely:
1)       In the absence of any official determination on the issue of guilt or innocence, no one can say for sure which one it is can they?  So how can you state implicitly that the Daily Mirror can state they were cleared?!  Surely in the interest of your Code of Practice and in fairness if you cannot state with fact and there’s no official determination either way then it would be better to not say anything at all, as the matter is so ambiguous?!
2)       Except there is some guidance and fact here in this instance, as per point 2 (above) made from page 70 of the Supreme Court documentation – It’s not acceptable to consider the archiving, based on insufficiency of evidence, as evidence of innocence.  Their current status as per the Portuguese Supreme Court documentation is not innocent.  True they are not classed as guilty either but either way for the IPSO to claim the press can print that the McCann’s have been cleared is factually, legally and morally wrong.
 
This brings me onto the main point of my original complaint namely that when press articles state that the McCann’s were cleared in 2008 when the Portuguese PJ case was archived, this is factually and legally incorrect and that it is wrong to state this.
I need only include the one quote from the Portuguese Supreme Court documents and it is this one:
1)       “And let it not be said, too, that the appellants were cleared by the order of filing the criminal proceedings”.  The McCann’s were not cleared when the case was archived in 2008!  For the record they were the only 2 formal suspects!
 
To summarize then, the McCann’s have not been cleared of any wrong doing and neither have they been cleared because of the archiving of the case in 2008 by the Portuguese authorities.  These two main issues are corroborated by documents from the highest court in Portugal to which the McCann’s took their legal battle, again the reference to these legal documents is here [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.].  To state that either or both of these points in the British media is factually, legally and morally incorrect and inaccurate to do so and is therefore a clear and obvious breach of the IPSO Code of Practice, clause 1 – accuracy.
 
Some other interesting additional information to consider:
1)       The IPSO stated in their response “You provided news articles in support of your complaint”.  As previously mentioned I also provided links to the official Portuguese Supreme Court documents on which the Daily Mirror’s articles are loosely based.  The IPSO refused to acknowledge these documents as supporting evidence in their response.
2)       This original complaint was submitted late on the 2^nd April 2017, confirmation received on the morning of 3^rd April 2017.  Considering the main point of my complaint which was “any media outlet that prints that the McCann’s were cleared in 2008 upon archiving of the case” is wrong to do so, and that on the evening of the 3^rd April 2017 The Sun also repeated the exact same claim from the first Daily Mirror link I provided.  I have evidence that the IPSO temporarily blocked the email address that I used to submit this complaint from, to prevent me from submitting further complaints.  I also have further evidence to support this accusation as per complaint IPSO: [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]# which was submitted about The Suns article but sent from an alternative email address in between times that I attempted to submit from my usual email address, all attempts of which came back as rejected/blocked by the IPSO server and client host.
 
Moving on to complaint [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]# of which you have just responded to.  My response to this complaint is mostly the same as above with the exception of the following errors on the IPSO’s part.
1)       Alistair Henwood claims that my complaint was about an article from The Sun on the 19^th February 2017 entitled “Cover Up Challenge”.  This is wholly wrong as my complaint was actually about this article of which you have provided proof I submitted to you, via several means [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.] dated 3^rd April 2017.  So immediately your decision in this particular complaint is invalidated because you haven’t assessed the correct article.
2)       In conjunction with this complaint and all of the above I will state once more that it is legally, factually and morally wrong for newspapers or indeed yourselves to print, state or reinforce the notion that the McCann’s have been cleared of a) any wrong doing or b) upon case archival in 2008.  This is simply not true and supported by legal court documents from the highest court in Portugal.  Therefore newspapers are not entitled to characterise this is any other way, shape or form just to be able to print clear propaganda that has been so evident over the last decade.  Furthermore your Code of Practice dictates that you must not support this characterisation or (un)intentional misleading of the facts.
3)       The Metropolitan Police have stated several things over the years via press releases.  Some of the more important ones are: 1) It’s a Portuguese Police investigation, they have supremacy. 2) The original Portuguese Police original investigation concluded that the McCann’s are involved with Madeleine’s disappearance, death, disposal and subsequent cover up of this. 3) Scotland Yard’s Operation Grange has very recently admitted that they’ve reviewed these files and as far as parental involvement goes, they are happy with these files – What does that tell you?! 4) Ultimately as the original incident occurred in Portugal, the lead police force was the Portuguese PJ, the legal trials that the McCann’s instigated and subsequently lost against Mr Amaral in were all Portuguese, the final verdicts in that dispute all came from the highest court in Portugal – The Supreme Court.  Therefore considering all of this neither you or the newspapers have any grounds whatsoever to ignore, contradict or misinterpret the a) verdict or b) the legal ramifications of those Supreme Court documents or the Portuguese PJ case files.
 

Yours faithfully,

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Received the rejection last night based upon what I perceive to be an absolute joke given it appears to be a flat out lie:

Dear Mr H,
 
The Complaints Committee has considered your complaints, the emails of 21 and 26 April 2017 from IPSO’s Executive notifying you of its view that your complaints did not raise a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice, and your email of 27 April 2017 requesting a review of the Executive’s decision, and has agreed the following decision:
 
The Committee would like to apologise, on behalf of the Executive, for the incorrect reference to the headline, in their initial response to you in regards to your complaint against thesun.co.uk. It would like to assure you that this was an administrative error, and that your complaint has been carefully considered under the correct article.
 
The Committee noted your broader concerns regarding the reporting of the Portuguese police investigation into Madeleine McCann’s disappearance. You expressed concern that it was inaccurate to report that Mr and Mrs McCann were “cleared of any wrongdoing”. In circumstances where Mr and Mrs McCann are no longer being investigated as formal suspects, in light of the disappearance of Madeleine McCann, the Committee did not consider that it was significantly misleading to report that Mr and Mrs McCann were “cleared of any wrongdoing”. As the articles do not refer to the case being archived, the Committee declined to reopen your complaint on this point. 
 
For these reasons, and the reasons already provided by IPSO’s Executive, your complaint did not raise a possible breach of the Code.
 
The Committee would like to thank you for giving it the opportunity to consider your concerns. 
 
Best wishes,
 
Abigail Tuitt

I write further to our earlier email regarding your complaint about articles headlined:

1.    “’IT’S THE END OF THE ROAD Madeleine McCann’s parents Kate and Gerry ‘have failed’ in their battle to silence ex-Portuguese cop over sick slurs” published by thesun.co.uk on 12 July 2017.

2.    “MADDIE CONSPIRACY COP Who is Goncalo Amaral? Ex-Madeleine McCann cop who claims Kate and Gerry killed their daughter” published by thesun.co.uk on 12 July 2017.

On receipt of a complaint, IPSO’s Executive reviews it to ensure that it falls within our remit and raises a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice. The Executive has now completed an assessment of your complaint under the terms of the Code. Having considered the points you have raised in full, we have concluded that your complaint does not raise a possible breach of the Editors’ Code.

We noted your concerns that the articles breached Clause 1 (Accuracy), because they described Goncalo Amaral as claiming that the McCanns “killed” Madeleine, when his book in fact claimed that Madeleine died in an accident and that Kate and Gerry McCann concealed her death. We noted that both articles also reported that he had alleged the McCann’s faked the abduction after Madeleine had accidentally been killed. The first article went on to make clear that “in his once banned book ‘The Truth of the Lie’, [Mr Amaral] claimed Maddie accidentally died in an accident at the holiday flat or by being given an overdose of sedatives”. We considered that, where Mr Amaral had alleged that the McCanns may have accidentally killed their daughter and the articles both explained the precise allegation made, the use of “killing” in the sentences you highlighted was not significantly misleading.  

We also noted your second complaint under Clause 1 (Accuracy).  We considered that the statement “Mr Amaral claimed in a TV documentary and his bestselling 2008 book that the parents had killed Maddie and faked her kidnapping after she vanished in Praia da Luz in 2007 – but there is no truth in the claims” accurately summarized the allegations Mr Amaral had made and the fact that they had not been substantiated; we considered that the Sun was entitled to make clear its view that, in the absence of evidence, there was no truth in the allegations.  We considered that the claim “the Policia Judiciaria inspector led the initial bungled hunt for Maddie” was the Sun’s comment on Mr Amaral’s involvement in a lengthy police investigation that had involved an initial search and subsequent re-investigation.  We considered that the newspaper was entitled to give its opinion in this way and that it was not significantly misleading for the newspaper to refer to the “initial bungled hunt for Maddie”. 

Overall, we considered that your complaint did not raise a possible breach of Clause 1. 

You are entitled to request that the Executive’s decision to reject your complaint be reviewed by IPSO’s Complaints Committee. To do so you will need to write to us in the next seven days, setting out the reasons why you believe the decision should be reviewed. Please note that we are unable to accept requests for review made seven days after the date of this email.

We would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider the points you have raised, and have shared this correspondence with the newspaper to make it aware of your concerns.

Best wishes,

Catherine Thomas

cc thesun.co.uk

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Best wishes - my bum! 

What a load of old waffle.  If you asked them to provide the spelling and/or meaning of the word 'tabloid' they've no doubt got a clause to hide behind.  Deliberately, they make it nigh on impossible to penetrate the system.

I had an ongoing altercation with the BBC many moons ago - end result zero.  I went right the way through the system from the tea-trolley up to the Director General who referred me to the Trust who sent me on my way back down the ladder, only ending back where I started - the tea-trolley.

The Complaints Committee has considered your complaint, the email of 27 July 2017 from IPSO’s Executive notifying you of its view that your complaint did not raise a possible breach of the Editors’ Code of Practice, and your email of 28 July 2017 requesting a review of the Executive’s decision. The Committee agreed the following decision:

The Committee would like to thank you for giving it the opportunity to consider your concerns.