| >> TABLOID FABRICATED HEATHROW PLOT.
Evening Standard condemned by press watchdog for coverage of the Camp for Climate Action's Heathrow protest. Claim of fabrication upheld.
19 March 2008 - Ruling to be released at 11 am
In a much awaited ruling the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) issued a stinging rebuke against the Evening Standard today. The usually mild-mannered PCC slammed the Standard's coverage of last summer's Camp for Climate Action at Heathrow as 'materially misleading' and 'alarmist' (1).
On 13 August last year, the Standard ran a front page story headlined 'Militants will hit Heathrow' the day before a climate change protest camp near Heathrow airport opened. Chief reporter Robert Mendick said he had uncovered a plot to paralyse the airport via invading runways and placing suspect packages. The story was subsequently echoed in several media outlets, all of which ran the false claims believing them to be true. The Camp for Climate Action immediately wrote to the PCC declaring that the article was 'fabricated'. The PCC adjudicated the complaint as 'upheld' (1).
The PCC gave the strongest possible reprimand in its powers, finding that the article was a 'serious breach' of the PCC code of journalistic standards. They found that "adequate care had not been taken" by the Standard, despite the Standard's claim that their reporting was the result
of an 'extensive operation organised by an extremely experienced team of executives and senior reporters' (2).
The rare PCC ruling (3) comes after seven months' worth of submissions, in which the story's authorship, sources and credibility are all called into question (1,4). Alexandra Harvey, one of the team responsible for pulling apart the Standard's story, said today:
"This was a political hit job of the worst kind. There was no plot, and the Standard's ever changing claims throughout this process show that this was a fiction created for political ends - to stop the growth of a mass movement taking action on climate change" (4).
Chief reporter Robert Mendick has previously denied writing the very article he authored and the PCC condemned (5). The Standard subsequently claimed the story was the work of a different junior journalist, Rashid Razaq, working undercover.
Mr Razaq has a history of being accused of fabrications which the Standard has ignored. Last year Mr Razaq wrote a story falsely alleging the showing of films sympathetic to terrorists at the Freud Museum. The alleged interviewee said the interview Mr Razaq reported in the article never took place. A complaint by the museum's director and curator was never answered (6). An undercover story by Mr Razaq about his work at Barnet Hospital as a cleaner was called into question when the Hospital stated that he was in fact employed as a porter, and had misreported significant facts. (6)
"This is a disturbing pattern, and the Standard ought to examine why Mr Razaq was allowed to continue writing these stories for so long", said Ms Harvey.
Natasha Edlemann said, "This summer will see increased direct action aimed at stopping climate change. This growing movement expects and deserves scrutiny from the media, but we need to draw a line under dangerous propaganda by those who claim to care about climate change while seeking to destroy the reputations of the people who are actually doing something
about it."
This year's Camp for Climate Action will take place 4 to 11 August at Kingsnorth coal-fired power station in Kent (7).
ENDS (This press release was reproduced curtesy of Climate Camp.)
For interviews call +44 (0)777 286 1099 or email press@climatecamp.org.uk
www.climatecamp.org.uk
1. The full adjudication is available at www.pcc.org.uk, and all documents submitted to the PCC from the Camp for Climate Action and the Evening Standard are available at www.climatecamp.org.uk/esfabrication.php. See 'Dissection of a lie' at
www.climatecamp.or.uk/anatomyofafabrication.php for some examples of referenced claims and counter-claims.
2. See Managing Editor Doug Wills's 12 February 2008 letter to the PCC:
www.climatecamp.org.uk/anatomyofafabrication.php
3. Of the 28,000 complaints to the PCC submitted over 10 years, it made a formal adjudication on 448, or 1.6%. (Nick Davies, Flat Earth News, Chatto & Windus)
4. See 'Dissection of a lie':
The Standard changed its story on several key issues throughout the process, most significantly regarding what Mr Razaq saw near the Heathrow security fence, why the photographer accompanying him that night did not take photos of the incident, and why he could not provide detailed notes from the day on which he overheard the alleged plot. For full details see
George Monbiot's story in the Guardian, 4 March 2007 (www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/04/associatednewspapers.pressandpublishing) and the submissions on the website at: www.climatecamp.org.uk/anatomyofafabrication.php
5. George Monbiot, Guardian, 18 August 2007.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/story/0,,2151301,00.html
6. George Monbiot, Guardian, 4 March 2008.
www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/mar/04/associatednewspapers.pressandp...
For more information see also: www.climatecamp.or.uk/anatomyofafabrication.php.
Mr Predrag, the curator of the show at the Freud museum, and author of a previous complaint to the Standard about Mr Razaq can be reached on 0773 443 4066.
7. The camp is a week of sustainable living, education on all aspects of climate change and direct action. There will be two days of action. A day of mass action against the power station will take place on 9 August. Owners E.On are planning to build the first new coal-fired power station
in the UK for 30 years at Kingsnorth. Coal is the dirtiest fossil fuel, and responsible for almost 40% of all emissions from fossil fuels globally. There will be a day of action against agrofuels on 6 August. Agrofuel use is increasing food prices and hunger, and reducing biodiversity. Ecosystem destruction is the second-largest source of carbon dioxide emissions after fossil fuel use.
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