Sun forced into crushing apology over Prof. Nutt


by Septicisle    
8:30 am - January 6th 2010

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Back in November the Sun decided that it was time to resort to the old tabloid trick of attacking someone by association when they couldn’t lay a finger on the target himself personally.

David Nutt, a senior adviser on drugs to the ACMD, had just been defenestrated by Alan Johnson for daring to argue again that cannabis isn’t as dangerous as either the government claims or its classification suggests.

So naturally it was time to go scouting around his children’s social networking pages to see if they could find any pay dirt.

The result, an article which accused his son Stephen of partaking in cannabis because he was smoking what was clearly a roll-up and not a normal, honest, cigarette, his daughter Lydia of drinking underage, and the by no means hypocritical sneering at his eldest son for appearing naked in the snow in Sweden, ended up being removed with days of it appearing.

Yesterday the Press Complaints Commission published Stephen Nutt’s letter of complaint on their website (h/t Tabloid Watch):

The complaint was resolved when the newspaper removed the article from the website, undertook not to repeat the story and published the following letter:

FURTHER to your article about photographs of me on my Facebook site, (November 14) I would like to make clear the pictures were not posted by me and while I had been drinking I was smoking a rolled-up cigarette which did not contain cannabis as the article insinuated. My younger sister Lydia was not intoxicated, so was not drinking under age.

My older brother lives in Sweden where it is custom to use a sauna followed by a ‘romp’ in the snow in winter. He was neither drunk nor under the influence of intoxicants. Innocuous photographs were taken out of context in an attempt to discredit my father’s work.

Which is about as comprehensive and wounding a clarification as ever gets published in the Sun.

The article was so obviously in breach of the PCC’s code on privacy, not to mention accuracy, that it should never have been published in the first place though; why then should the paper get away without making anything approaching an apology, only having to print a clarification buried away on the letters page?

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About the author
'Septicisle' is a regular contributor to Liberal Conspiracy. He mostly blogs, poorly, over at Septicisle.info on politics and general media mendacity.
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Reader comments


1. undeadbydawn

A slightly better question is why does the Sun ‘newspaper’ still exist?

2. Quietzapple

Nutt was sacked for the ludicrous way he undermined the war on drugs.

It was waffly propaganda to suggest that cannabis is less dangerous than nicotine for example, try driving with nicotine in your bloodstream, and then with cannabinols etc in their place.

Yesterday I “overheard” (were they deaf?) teenagers on the top deck of a bus prattling about their dope deals, convinced that Nutt says dope is harmless.

Up and down the land the impressionable young tell their parents that drugs are safe, well the ones they use themselves . . .

3. claude

#2
that is totally beside the point.
I don’t know if you’ve read the OP.
Whatever Prof Nutts’ views, does that justify the awful practice of having a daily sticking their nose into the private lives of his children?

4. Steve Rolles

The Mail ran this story as well – have they printed an apology.

Should the apology and clarification not be given the same prominence as the original story?

5. Gareth

Corrections/apologies should be printed on the same page as the original article imo

6. Quietzapple

I think that the Dully Maul and The Sun are almost beneath contempt, certainly not beneath legal action.

They attack all manners of people unreasonably, usually on the side of the Billionaires and their Tory servants in the Class war.

I hope Prof Nutt and his family are revenged to greater effect in the future. Libels should be remedied more easily.

However it seems reasonable to make the points I did in contradiction of aspects of the Blog post without undermining its central point.

7. Quietzapple

If only The Sun was crushed by their apology . . . .

8. Shatterface

‘Nutt was sacked for the ludicrous way he undermined the war on drugs.’

You can’t ‘ludicrously’ undermine something which is ludicrous in the first place. Nutt assessed the evidence and ‘discovered’ what generations had already discovered for themselves: that canabis is relatively harmless, that prohibition is counterproductive and that opposition springs from the same moralizing, quasi-religious fear of ‘unearned’ pleasure as the belief wanking makes you blind.

‘It was waffly propaganda to suggest that cannabis is less dangerous than nicotine for example, try driving with nicotine in your bloodstream, and then with cannabinols etc in their place.’

Sounds like they’re talking from experience, not just spouting propoganda from the newspapers.

‘Corrections/apologies should be printed on the same page as the original article imo’

Exactly.

9. Rik Hemsley

Surely the publication should be shut down for this kind of behaviour?

10. Bloom

My younger sister Lydia was not intoxicated, so was not drinking under age.

Bit of a non-denial denial that one, isn’t it?

My Mum wasn’t totally ratarsed last Sunday, but that didn’t mean she hadn’t had a sherry.

As for all this pious talk about privacy – remember that all the Sun did (apart from wrongly distorting the context and drawing unwarranted inferences – which aren’t privacy issues per se)) was draw to the attention of its 2 or 3 million readers some pics that the various Nutts had posted on the world wide web where many hundreds of millions could see them.

11. Quietzapple

@Shatterface I’ve never driven under the influence of either alcohol or cannabinols or any other drug. You may offer an apology below.

In my view media apologies should be of at least equal prominence as the original article where that assists those whose reputations or privacy was damaged.

They should attempt where possible to restore the good reputations of any injured so far as that is possible, and/or pay compensation so far as that is not possible. In cases where privacy is unreasonably breached compensation is the only option I can imagine.

Most Tory papers would be bankrupted in months, forcing their owners – even the expat Billionaires – to put up or shut up.

12. Quietzapple

I suppose those who think it ludicrous to deny that driving under the influence of “dope” causes danger to others will seek to stop tests on drivers who do just that.

If not, then they endorse the point that it is ludicrous for Nutt to have claimed that nicotine is more dangerous than cannabis.

If they do, would they please present to the nearest police station with their car keys.

I find the evidence of my ears on the top of that bus – and other experiences – far more compelling than commenters whose allegations about the newspapers I read are so wide of the mark.

Dopes into dope are truly desperate, Nutt remains a flame to the self destructive.

13. Nick

“I suppose those who think it ludicrous to deny that driving under the influence of “dope” causes danger to others will seek to stop tests on drivers who do just that.

If not, then they endorse the point that it is ludicrous for Nutt to have claimed that nicotine is more dangerous than cannabis.”

Riding a horse while driving a car is probably more dangerous than driving a car while under the influence of cannabis. Does that imply horse riding is more dangerous than taking cannabis?

Your point would only be valid if we were all forever glued into the driver’s seat of an always running car. Fortunately, we aren’t, and so people can safely partake in cannabis so long as they are not driving that evening. You know, some of us don’t even drive cars!

14. claude

“Bloom” @10 thinks bullying on the largest widest most appalling possible scale is fine. I’m sure you’re a great chap.

15. Andy Diggle

“Sun Forced Into Crushing Apology… without making anything approaching an apology…”

Uh, what?

16. Quietzapple

Falling off a cliff while under the influence of cannabis is no more dangerous than falling off a cliff without that dubious benefit . . .

17. ukliberty

It was waffly propaganda to suggest that cannabis is less dangerous than nicotine for example, try driving with nicotine in your bloodstream, and then with cannabinols etc in their place.

I think Nutt talked about tobacco, not nicotine.

Yesterday I “overheard” (were they deaf?) teenagers on the top deck of a bus prattling about their dope deals, convinced that Nutt says dope is harmless.

It seems wrong to blame Nutt for the self-elected outraged-on-our-behalf grossly misrepresenting what he was talking about… in a speech delivered some months prior to when the outraged got on their shetland ponies.

18. Bloom

Claude @ 14

clearly has reading comprehension difficulties.

Of course I don’t condone what the Sun did.

That’s why I described it as “wrongly distorting the context and drawing unwarranted inferences”.

If you can’t hear the pejorative/critical tone in that, you need your ears examined.

My point was that as invasions of privacy go, re-cycling pictures the ‘victims’ have themselves posted in that VERY public place called Facebook doesn’t rate as among the most serious I’ve ever come across.

19. Shatterface

‘I suppose those who think it ludicrous to deny that driving under the influence of “dope” causes danger to others will seek to stop tests on drivers who do just that.’

Why should I be banned from doing one thing on the grounds I might attempt a second thing which is entirely seperate?

I doubt I’d masturbate at the wheel either – even though I am a JG Ballard fan.

Are you advocating banning alcohol as well because that’s where your logic leads: if we ban cannabis to prevent driving under the influence of cannabis rather than, say, simply banning driving under the influence of cannabis why not ban alcohol to prevent drunk driving?

20. Daniel Hoffmann-Gill

As I said over at Septicisle’s blog, this had made my day, although the flurry of comments that seem to have not read the blog post are a tedious annoyance.

21. claude

#18 “Bloom”:

“Pious talk about privacy” “remember all the Sun did” .

All the Sun did? Pious talking? And then you come and lecture about “pejorative” tones? C’mon, mate, who are you fooling?

I read your pejorative bit (and btw people don’t read with their ears…but that’s a different story) , but you also specified it under “which aren’t privacy issues per se” – which means you really don’t see (or shall I say hear) the sheer magnitude of the “privacy issue” at stake here.

While I think we all agree that Prof Nutt’s son should have been a little more careful with his “privacy settings” on Facebook, I totally dispute how Bloom put it.

You said:
“remember that all the Sun did [...] was draw to the attention of its 2 or 3 million readers some pics that the various Nutts had posted on the world wide web where many hundreds of millions could see them”.

It shocks me how you can make a logical jump just like that. Hundreds of millions could have seen such pictures, but they were never going to. And that is key. Because Prof Nutts isn’t Paris Hilton or any celebrity who may have their facebook page scrutinised by millions everyday.
The Sun, however, ensured that 2 to 3 million (and after the case became known, god knows how many more) saw them.

“as invasions of privacy go, re-cycling pictures the ‘victims’ have themselves posted in that VERY public place called Facebook doesn’t rate as among the most serious I’ve ever come across“.

To have your pictures on Facebook, even if set on “viewable by everyone”, does not AT ALL give a paper the right to nick them and publish them for everyone to see. I guess this is something that the owners of Facebook or whiever regulates such matters need to sort out asap.

One may not bother about privacy settings because they may think that only friends, acquaintances or colleagues may be interested in viewing their pics. Reckless, certainly. But they’re hardly going to expect the press to actively parade them for the world at large to see as part of a vulgar hatchet-job.

In other words, the fact that I make my pictures potentially viewable by everyone should not mean that I want them seen by the entire nation as published by the best-selling daily.

22. Bloom

claude

Be honest – can’t you acknowledge a distinction between, say, the paparazzi hiding up a tree and taking shots of a sleb poolside in her bikini bottoms (but without top) and them publishing them in a tabloid without permission and simply pointing to some pics already published on a social networking site?

One is a serious invasion of privacy. The other isn’t an invasion of anything; it’s just rather poor manners.

my other point – which you wilfully keep failing to grasp is that PRIVACY is not the key issue here for which the Sun deserves criticism. DISTORTION is.

Finally,

and btw people don’t read with their ears…

No, but it is what they hear tone with. Which, if you go back and read the sentence again, is what I was talking about.

23. claude

bloom,

You obviously didn’t digest the following. Which is, I repeat, key to the matter:

I’ll repeat it:

Hundreds of millions could have seen such pictures, but they were never going to. And that is key. Because Prof Nutts isn’t Paris Hilton or any celebrity who may have their facebook page scrutinised by millions everyday.
The Sun, however, ensured that 2 to 3 million (and after the case became known, god knows how many more) saw them.

“can’t you acknowledge a distinction between, say, the paparazzi hiding up a tree and taking shots of a sleb poolside in her bikini bottoms (but without top) and them publishing them in a tabloid without permission and simply pointing to some pics already published on a social networking site?”

Except that they didn’t “point” to some pictures. They nicked them, made them available to millions and made a cruel, devastating hatchet job out of it. You already acknowledged the fact that they “distorted the context”. Thats a start.
but to me it’s a peripheral point.

I keep seeing a huge, unjustified, invasion of privacy – the true job of a bully- which is what the Sun is specialised in. What I find appalling, and not just slightly disturbing, is how they can light-heartedly set out to destroylives just like that without the slightest remorse.

I’m expert, but I wonder whether nicking photos online the way they did is actually legal or not, especially when the intention is to use them the way the Sun did.

How else would you explain the fact that the article in question disappeared within 48 hours?

To round it all off, one extremely important point that you are completely ignoring (and that Stephen Nutt mentioned in his letter) is that lots of photos on Facebook may not be “published” by yourself. They are “tagged”, ie your mate may purely unintentionally tag your name to photos that he/she took.

Another reason for any serious journalist not to even think of getting involved in such practices.

I think the episode is of the utmost gravity.

24. claude

Sorry. In my last comment, just above, I obviously meant “I’m NO expert”.

25. MrC

Its the Sun what did you expect news!

Don’t buy it, don’t give it house room and rember to pitty anyone you see reading it as they don’t have two brain cells to rum together.

It is still so hated in Liverpool that you can’t give the paper away in that city.


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