IPSO upholds accuracy complaint about Daily Express reporting of Family Court ruling
Following an article published on 27 August 2019 headlined “All I did was tell the truth...then court threw me in jail”, The Transparency Project complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that the newspaper had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.
IPSO upheld this complaint and has required The Daily Express to publish this decision as a remedy to the breach. The article reported that a woman had called for Family Court system reform after she was jailed for three years after it was “claimed” she had breached a non-molestation order, following what she said was a chance meeting with her child.
The article reported that the court had “said” the woman had coached her child to make allegations of sexual abuse against the father, and that the court had “put out a long interview with him, giving his version of the story”. The complainant said that the article had reported the woman’s version of events as the truth and in doing so, had misrepresented the court’s findings.
It said that the court found that the woman had breached the nonmolestation order; this was not a “claim”. The complainant said that the court had published a statement of proven facts and not an “interview” with the man.
The publication said that it had framed the woman’s claims as her own views and that it was entitled to publish her account. IPSO found that the article did not make clear that the court had ruled, as fact, that the woman had breached the non-molestation order or that the court had found that the meeting was not accidental.
IPSO found that the court had released a press release which explained the findings of the court and said that the allegations of sexual abuse made against the father were untrue and had been manufactured by the child’s mother.
The article did not make sufficiently clear that the allegations of sexual abuse made against the man were found to be untrue and referring to the court’s findings as an “interview” was significantly misleading. IPSO found that the publication had failed to take care when reporting publicly available details of a family court case in breach of Clause 1.