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19th
May 2005, The Scotsman
REMEMBER when you were younger and you did something wrong.
What was that word your parents made you say? That’s right.
Sorry. Why is it that newspapers find it so difficult to use
that word? All the more so when there is a very useful mechanism
to help the media when they get a story wrong and publish something
defamatory. It is called the "offer-of-amends" procedure.
In short, if a newspaper accepts before lodging a defence to
the action that it got it wrong and apologises, then it is entitled
to a discount in any damages that the court will ultimately
award.
The principles concerning the level of discount were laid down
recently in a case involving actor and musician Jimmy Nail and
the News of the World. In that case, the paper was granted a
50 per cent reduction in the damages that they had to pay because
of the way that they handled the matter. Just what happens when
the media don’t handle the matter well was seen last week
when the Guardian was in court over an error.
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Their
story linked Colonel Jonathan Campbell-James, a distinguished
soldier who has served for nearly 30 years in the Intelligence
Corps, to the notorious activities at Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad
where it was widely known that Iraqi prisoners had been systematically
abused and tortured by American soldiers.
The problem for the Guardian was that the Colonel was at no
stage based there or was in any way responsible for the interrogation
of prisoners. When the abuse took place, he was not even in
Iraq.
When confronted about the error, the Guardian argued that they
had a complete defence to the claim, that the story was covered
by privilege, that the article would be categorised as responsible
journalism, and even that it was covered by fair comment. Just
about everything apart from claiming that it was true.
The trial judge was scathing about their approach, stating that
it could not have hurt them to acknowledge promptly, on the
basis of uncontroversial facts, that the Colonel had nothing
to do with the Abu Ghraib abuses.
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"This
was plainly a case for an immediate and generous acknowledgment
of error and for putting matters right," the judge said.
"It was not simply a matter of good journalistic practice;
it was a matter of elementary human decency".
And then having lambasted them for their stance, the time it
took to apologise, and the place where the apology appeared,
the judge then decided still to grant them a 35 per cent discount
for going down the offer of amends . If ever there was a chance
to send out a signal to newspapers that they must act responsibly
at the earliest stage possible, then this was it. It was missed.
Knowing that they will be penalised only by such a small amount
will hardly be an incentive to follow good journalistic practice,
let alone elementary human decency.
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