Oh, and in other news, the Press Complaint Commission have rejected my claim that the Metro broke their code of conduct.
This is annoying. However, I can understand how they've come to this decision. I claimed breaches on the grounds of inaccuracy and discrimination and, while the article was grossly insulting and took ridiculous liberties with the truth in a lot of places, every stupid thing they said held just enough of a grain of truth for it to be impossible to declare it an outright lie and, unfortunately, that's the standard required to prove inaccuracy. A newspaper is allowed to be bigoted, biased, prejudiced and to outright misrepresent the truth if they choose, as long as they aren't telling a complete and verifiable falsehood, something which I was unable to prove.
On discrimination, the PCC code declares that discrimination can only apply to a prejudicial comment about a specific person's religion, rather than to a religious group. They stated that they, "do not address issues of taste and offence," as it could impinge on the right of free expression and, as the article did not refer in a discriminatory fashion to any person and did not make any verifiable falsehoods, there was no breach of the code.
I'm annoyed, but I guess I can understand the decision. It's more annoying that Mr Fort obviously played the technicalities as soon as the complaint came in and I wasn't able to place my case in such a way as would avoid them. Apparently, he has contacted the PCC following the decision and told them that he was planning on circulating a memo amongst his editorial staff about the issues I'd raised anyway, so I guess that's something, but, on the whole, I think I would've preferred being publically vindicated.
PJW
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