Decision of the Complaints Committee - 00857-20 Hayden v
The Spectator
Summary of Complaint
1. Stephanie Hayden complained to the Independent Press
Standards Organisation that The Spectator breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) and
Clause 9 (Reporting of Crime) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article
headlined “I stand with [named third party]”, published on 14 February 2020.
2. The article was a comment piece in which the author
expressed her opinion that police are “wasting time arresting Twitter
transphobes” as opposed to dealing with more serious crimes. The author
referred to a case concerning a woman who had been found “guilty, under the
Communications Act (2003), of using a public communications network to ’cause
annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety’.” It also described these communications
as “offensive tweets” and reported that “[t]hese included describing Hayden as
a ‘pig in a wig’ and referring to Hayden as ‘he’ or ‘him’.”
3. The complainant, the transgender woman who had been
subject to the Tweets, said that the article was inaccurate in breach of Clause
1 as it failed to accurately report the reasons for the woman’s conviction. The
complainant said that the woman had set up multiple troll Twitter accounts to
send her offensive Tweets and had published private financial and medical
information about her. She said that the article was one-sided and biased, and
inaccurately suggested that there had been a miscarriage of justice. In
addition, she said it was misleading to omit certain biographical details of
the woman.
4. The complainant also said that the article breached
Clause 9 for failing to accurately report a crime.
5. The publication did not accept that the article was
inaccurate. It said that the article was a comment piece from a journalist who
had attended the trial and sentencing, and that the crime that the woman had
been convicted of was clearly referred to in the article: “under the
Communications Act (2003), of using a public communications network to “cause
annoyance, inconvenience and anxiety”. The publication said that it was
impossible to report all the details that were heard in court, and that it had
described the substance of the Tweets and said that by reporting that the
offensive Tweets “included” the ones that it published it was clear that this
was not an exhaustive list. The publication also said that the defendant’s
biographical details referred to by the complainant had been found to not be
relevant in court, and therefore it was not relevant to be included in the
article.
6. The publication said that the terms of Clause 9 were not
engaged.
Relevant Code Provisions
7. Clause 1 (Accuracy)
i) The Press must take care not to publish inaccurate,
misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not
supported by the text.
ii) A significant inaccuracy, misleading statement or
distortion must be corrected, promptly and with due prominence, and — where
appropriate — an apology published. In cases involving IPSO, due prominence
should be as required by the regulator.
iii) A fair opportunity to reply to significant inaccuracies
should be given, when reasonably called for.
iv) The Press, while free to editorialise and campaign, must
distinguish clearly between comment, conjecture and fact.
Findings of the Committee
8. The article was a comment piece and under the terms of
Clause 1, the publication was entitled
to publish the writer’s opinion that the conviction was unfair and had the
effect of chilling freedom of speech. The article distinguished fact, the
details of the woman’s conviction, from the comments of the author, her view of
the utility of the prosecution of the woman, as required by Clause 1 (iii). In
addition, the article had not reported an exhaustive list of all the Tweets
that had been sent, including those which contained private medical and
financial information, however it had not suggested that this list was
exhaustive; it had used the word “including”. This made it clear that these was
the kind of things that had been said in the Tweets. Moreover, the article had
accurately reported the offence that the woman was convicted of. The article
was not significantly inaccurate in breach of Clause 1.
9. The defendant’s biographical details were not relevant to
the article, which concerned her court case, freedom of speech and the writer’s
opinion on what police time should be spent on. The publication was entitled to choose whether or not to publish this
information; it was not misleading to omit it. There was no breach of Clause 1.
10. Clause 9 relates to the identification of the friends
and family of individuals who are accused or convicted of crime. As no such
persons were identified in the article, there was no breach of Clause 9.
Conclusions
11. The complaint was not upheld.
Remedial Action Required
12. N/A
Date complaint received: 14/02/2020
Date complaint concluded by IPSO: 22/04/2020