We always welcome a Letter to the Editor to share with our readers. If you have something you’d like to share, get in touch. This in from Retired Hack, a former journalist with long-standing experience in the profession. In his own words, Ed
On Friday (7th March 2014) I read the County Press’ (CP) report of the David Green inquest. I’m hugely disappointed by it.
Until then I’ve had some sympathy for the CP’s position.
Last October they did what most newspapers would have done. They picked up the story of Ecoisland’s insolvency from another media outlet (OnTheWight?); received information that the police were taking an interest; put that suggestion to the police; and published what they were told, both by the police and the IWC.
They named Mr Green, which they needn’t have done, but there again it wouldn’t have taken a genius to work out his identity given that he was Ecoisland’s sole director.
I don’t think the CP can reasonably have been expected to foresee the chain of events set off at that point.
Friday’s report, however, is something else altogether. I think it’s very poor indeed.
Inconvenient to its reputation?
Friday’s report entirely fails to explain how it came about that Mr Green was arrested before the police had had time to go through the evidence and discover that it was flawed.
This was explained perfectly clearly at the inquest by DC Lee Stewart, who said the decision to arrest was made after it became known that the County Press “had received information about the allegation, and it was deemed necessary to question [David Green] in case an attempt was made to destroy any evidence once the matter was made public.”
It’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the CP finds this “detail” inconvenient to its reputation. In fact the question is central to the whole sad affair. The premature release of information led to an arrest which was also premature because it was made before the evidence had been properly considered.
Did early contact between CP and IWC spark arrest?
The report asserts that the information supplied “prematurely” by the IWC to the Press was the information that “it had referred the matter of the missing £115,000 to police”. This refers to a statement issued by Stuart Love at lunchtime on Thursday, 3rd October.
However, it could well be that Mr Green had already been arrested when Mr Love made his statement.
The arrest was confirmed by police that evening, but normal police procedure would have been to arrest him early in the morning, question him all day, and bail him in the evening. If that is so (and the IWC investigation which the Coroner wants needs to nail it down); and if DC Stewart’s evidence was correct, then, to me, it follows that there was some earlier contact between the IWC and the CP, and then between the CP and the police, which preceded – and led to – the arrest.
IWC investigation
It’s not until the penultimate paragraph of the report that the Coroner’s call for an IWC investigation is mentioned; and there follows a deafening silence on how the IWC intends to respond to that call.
I find it completely implausible that senior figures at the IWC and the CP have not discussed with each other what happens next.
The problem is, in my view, that they appear to regard it as a private matter – again, in mind, to do with reputations – rather than as a matter for proper journalistic enquiry, which is what it is.
The family deserve better
The report appears on Page 3 and is bylined “by a court reporter”. I think it may as well have been bylined “by a lawyer”, because that’s who I suspect will have closely advised the Editor, certainly on the content and possibly on the position of the article.
There’s nothing at all wrong with getting a story “legalled” if a newspaper fears legal repercussions over something it’s previously published – that’s what media lawyers are for. But to my mind this, yet again, appears to be all about reputation, rather than to any possible legal peril.
And as well as being selective, it looks crass; it lacks any expression of condolence perhaps lest it be interpreted as an admission of responsibility (which it wouldn’t), and it breaks one of the cardinal rules of newspaper self-regulation, which is that if you prominently report an accusation against someone which turns out to be false, then you give equal prominence to the clearing of that person’s name.
Mr Green’s family deserves better.
