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Kate and Gerry McCann talking to the press
earlier this year during a libel case
against a former Portuguese police
officer. ‘Newspapers treat the people
they write about as if they don’t exist.
Wild animals are given more respect.’
Photograph: Mario Cruz/EPA
Nearly three years ago my wife, Kate, and I
appeared before the Leveson inquiry to
talk about the campaign of lies that was
waged against us after our daughter
Madeleine went missing. We described how
our lives had been turned into a soap
opera so that newspapers could make
money, with no regard for truth, for the
distress they were inflicting, or for
the damage caused to the search for
Madeleine. We asked Lord Justice Leveson
to ensure that in future things would be
different and that nobody would ever
again have to endure the dishonest
reporting we experienced, or at least
that there would be some quick,
effective way of correcting false
reports in newspapers.
Nothing has changed since then. Big newspaper
companies continue to put sales and
profit before truth. The protection for
ordinary people is as feeble as it
always was.
A year ago, when Kate and I were experiencing
a time of renewed hope as the
Metropolitan police stepped up its new
investigation into Madeleine’s
disappearance, we received an email late
on a Thursday night from the Sunday
Times. Its reporter asked us to comment
on information he planned to publish.
This turned out to be a claim that for
five years Kate, I and the directors of
Madeleine’s Fund withheld crucial
evidence about Madeleine’s
disappearance. We rushed to meet his
deadline for a response. In the vain
hope that the Sunday Times would not
publish such a clearly damaging and
untrue story, we sent a statement to the
newspaper. We denied the main tenet of
the story and emphasised that since
Madeleine’s disappearance we had fully
cooperated with the police and that the
directors of Madeleine’s Fund had always
acted in her best interest.
However, the Sunday Times went ahead and
published the report on its front page,
largely ignoring our statement. We tried
to settle this matter quickly and
without legal action. I wrote to the
editor asking for a correction, but all
we got in response was an offer to
publish a “clarification” and tweak a
few lines of the article – but still to
continue to publish it on the
newspaper’s website. Indeed, further
correspondence from the paper only
aggravated the distress the original
article had caused, created a huge
volume of work and forced us to issue a
formal complaint to get redress through
our lawyers.
Eventually, two months after the article was
published, a correction was printed,
retracting all the allegations and
apologising. But even then – and despite
the grotesque nature of what it had
falsely alleged on its front page – the
apology was on an inside page and the
word “apology” was absent from the
headline. Since then, it has taken 11
months and the filing of a legal claim
to get the Sunday Times to agree to
damages, all of which we are donating to
charity, and to get our right to tell
the public that we had won the case. But
the cost to the paper is peanuts – the
fee for a single advertisement will
probably cover it. And there will be no
consequences for anyone working there.
Nothing will be done to ensure that in future
reporters and editors try harder to get
things right. And so the same people
will do something similar, soon, to some
other unfortunate family – who will
probably not have our hard-earned
experience of dealing with these things
and who will probably never succeed in
getting a correction or an apology.
So what has changed in the newspaper industry
since the Leveson report two years ago?
Absolutely nothing. Newspapers continue
to put “stories” before the truth, and
without much care for the victims.
They treat the people they write about as if
they don’t exist. Wild animals are given
more respect. They hide behind talk
about the rights of the press while they
routinely trash the rights of ordinary
people. They constantly claim to stand
up to the powerful, but they are the
ones with the power, and they use it
ruthlessly.
Legal action should be a last resort. A final
route when all else has failed. I don’t
blame Leveson. He recommended changes
that would make a big difference. He
wanted a press self-regulator that was
not controlled by the big newspaper
companies and that had real clout. If a
paper told lies about you, you could go
to this body and count on fast and fair
treatment: it would not just let papers
off the hook. More than that, Leveson
wanted a cheap, quick arbitration
service so that ordinary people did not
need to resort to the law. Our
experience shows this is a vital reform.
Parliament backed Leveson’s plan. The public
backs it. So do we, and almost all the
other victims who gave evidence to
Leveson. Only one group of people is
opposing this change – the perpetrators
themselves, the same editors and
newspaper owners who were responsible
for all that cruelty. Instead of
accepting the Leveson plan, these
people, including the owner of the
Sunday Times, have set up another sham
regulator called Ipso, which is designed
to do their bidding just like the old,
disgraced Press Complaints Commission.
If in another year’s time the press still
rejects the royal charter – itself
already a compromise – then it will be
time for parliament to deliver on the
promises the party leaders made, and
ensure that what Leveson recommended is
actually delivered. Otherwise elements
of the press will go on treating people
with total contempt. This time, once
again, it was Kate and I who were the
targets. Next time it could be you. |
