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And McCann has also
criticised the newspaper publishers’ new
regulator, the Independent Press
Standards Organisation, describing it as
“sham”.
Last month, Press Gazette
revealed that McCann, and his wife Kate,
had won a libel settlement from The
Sunday Times over a front page Insight
story last year which claimed that they
had withheld important information from
police investigating the disappearance
of their daughter.
Writing in The Guardian,
McCann described the £55,000 payout –
which was donated to charity – as
“peanuts” for the paper. “[T]he fee for
a single advertisement will probably
cover it,” he wrote. “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.”
McCann, a supporter of
press reform campaign group Hacked Off,
claimed newspapers “treat the people
they write about as if they don’t exist”
and warned readers: “Next time it could
be you.”
He said: “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.”
McCann said that his
experience has shown that a “cheap,
quick arbitration service so that
ordinary people did not need to resort
to the law” is a “vital reform”.
“Parliament backed
Leveson’s plan,” he wrote. “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.” |
