Gerry McCann, father of missing child Madeleine, has accused the Sunday Times of behaving “disgracefully” after winning £55,000 in libel damages from the paper. The damages were awarded over a front page story in the paper that claimed the couple had deliberately hindered the investigation into the whereabouts of their missing daughter.
Writing in The Guardian, Gerry McCann says nothing has changed since the Leveson inquiry, which sought to put limits on press intrusion and force an improvement in press behaviour.
“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,” McCann writes.
“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."
The McCann’s spent 11 months since the publication of the story – which claimed they had withheld information about Madeleine’s disappearance – looking for an appropriate redress. McCann does not believe, however, that the £50,000, or what it represents, gives much hope that change has come about since Leveson.
“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.”
A group of English newspapers – with the exception of The Independent, The Guardian and The Financial Times – have formed their own regulatory body, the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso). The organisation started three weeks ago.
Scotland Yard are investigating a dossier – handed to them by a member of the public – that details 80 pages of online abuse directed at the McCanns, including offensive Facebook posts, tweets and forum messages, according to Sky News.
