by Brian Cathcart

If you watched the television drama, ask yourself this: how different would things have been if newspapers had reported the truth?

Imagine if the national newspapers that vilified Christopher Jefferies had investigated his story properly, or at least had honestly reported the views of the people who knew him at the time.

These newspapers had the power, the resources and the expertise. They could have done it. They often boast that this is the sort of thing they do – the mural in the front hall of the Sun’s head office speaks of ‘sticking up for the little guy’.

If they had done it, if they had shown independence of mind and bravery, they might have been heroes. But they didn’t.

Instead they simply told lies. In fact those two short words ‘told lies’ hardly do justice to the depravity of it. They published story after story that was the reverse of the truth. They repeated outrageous suggestions that they had not even attempted to verify. They indulged in fantasy for the sake of slick and impactful front pages.

This wasn’t just a mistake. It didn’t just happen one morning, but over three or four days. Eight newsrooms were involved: that is dozens of experienced news executives, dozens of seasoned reporters. Every one of those news organisations also employs lawyers, and expects its journalists to know the law.

This is the list of papers ultimately forced to admit publishing falsehoods about an entirely innocent man: the Sun, the Daily Mirror, the Daily Mail, the Daily Express, the Daily Star, the Daily Record, the Sunday Mirror and the Scotsman. In addition the Daily Mirror and the Sun were prosecuted and convicted for contempt of court.

Some in the industry want to shift the responsibility to the police. The police, they plead, led the papers into this. It is true that the police were also at fault, but since when did journalists sheepishly follow the lead of the police?

At the moment we are hearing almost every day about conflict between press and police. We are repeatedly told that journalists are independent and that they do an important job of challenging the narratives of officials such as police officers.

Not one of those papers challenged the police narrative on Christopher Jefferies. They all accepted the police line – and then added their own embroidery of inventions to create a kind of Silence of the Lambs fiction on their front pages. Truth was nowhere.

And almost unbelievably, all of this was a repeat of previous collective outrages perpetrated most notably against Kate and Gerry McCann. Almost all of those papers had done it before, and had apologised, and had paid damages. But they just did it again.

It is the culture summed up in the infamous words of a News of the World news executive since jailed for phone hacking: ‘That is what we do – we go out and destroy other people’s lives.’

So, what is the moral of this?

It is that British journalism desperately needs to rebuild its relationship with the British public. Outrageous wrongdoing has been too prevalent at too high a level at too many newspapers for this to be dismissed as a freak event. There is a serious problem and there has to be change.

And we know exactly the nature of the change is needed: the Leveson Inquiry heard every relevant opinion, weighed the evidence and made careful, cautious recommendations designed to uphold standards without inhibiting freedom of expression.

How did these news organisations react – the very same organisations that libelled Christopher Jefferies? With two fingers to the inquiry, to parliament, to their victims and to the public.

Since nothing has changed, you could be the next Christopher Jefferies – or a member of your family, or a colleague, or a neighbour. The culprits don’t care about reporting truth or being fair or standing up for justice.

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