Editor says sex offence story ‘killed’ newspaper
ANEWSPAPER editor has told a court he was not in work when an article identifying a victim in a sex case was published.
Thomas Sinclair is appealing against a conviction of identifying the victim of a sexual offence in the Ceredigion Herald in 2016.
He told the hearing at Swansea Crown Court that the paper, which ceased publication in December, was “killed off” by the prosecution of its editor, a court heard today.
Advertisers deserted the weekly publication after Sinclair was convicted of identifying the victim of a sexual offence in a court report in May last year, he has claimed.
“We shut the newspaper down,” he told Swansea Crown Court. “The publicity surrounding this particular case had a negative effect on our advertisers.”
Sinclair, whose defence said the small circulation of the paper meant it would only have been read by 0.68% of the county of Ceredigion before his conviction, is appealing against the verdict.
Judge Keith Thomas, sitting with two magistrates, rejected the first limb of the appeal when he ruled that the court report had contained so much detail that the victim could have been identified, even if only by family, friends and those who already knew something about her or her mother.
Sinclair argued he knew nothing about the report until he was made aware that police were investigating a complaint and wanted to interview him.
He said the Ceredigion Herald had been part of the Pembrokeshire, Llanelli and Carmarthenshire Herald group and, as editor of all four titles, all stories would be emailed to him before publication.
But, he said, he could not read them all and although he took an interest in the major stories, he left the rest to his deputy editor Jon Coles, who worked from home in Johnston and never actually entered the newspapers’ offices.
He said a time sheet maintained by a security guard at the group’s main premises in Milford Haven showed he had left the building on June 23, 2016, at 11.26am – before the report had been emailed to him. Consequently, he had not had any editorial input in relation to the article.
Cross-examined by Craig Jones, responding to the appeal, he agreed he had told the interviewing police officer that in his opinion the article “sailed close to the wind, but by the skin of its teeth it’s OK”.
Sinclair said that if he had edited the article he probably would have left out some of the information it contained.
The court decided it needed to hear evidence from Mr Coles, who will connect to Haverfordwest Magistrates’ Court by video link on January 22.
The hearing was adjourned until then.