Decision of the Complaints Committee 03097-14 Ambridge v
Essex Chronicle
Summary of complaint
1. Robert Ambridge complained to the Independent Press
Standards Organisation that the Essex Chronicle had breached Clause 3 (Privacy)
and Clause 4 (Harassment) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in an article
published on 19 December 2014, headlined “Twitter troll Old Holborn leaves
town…and moves to Chelmsford”.
2. The article reported that the complainant had recently
moved from his home in Braintree to Chelmsford, after his name, picture, home
address and workplace were revealed online. It detailed the complainant’s
reputation as an internet “troll”, under the identity “Old Holborn”. It noted
that he had posted “distasteful tweets about the Hillsborough stadium disaster
and murdered children”, leading to death threats after his identity was
revealed online a few months previously. It included the partial address of his
new home.
3. The complainant said that the inclusion of his partial
address, when the newspaper knew that he had received death threats, posed
potential safety concerns for him and his family, and therefore breached Clause
3. He provided examples of some of the threatening messages he had received
since the article under complaint was published, and said that his wife’s
employer had introduced protective measures in her workplace to prevent her
from receiving further abuse. He also said that it was the eighth article
concerning him which had been published by the newspaper, despite the fact that
he had committed no crime. He said that this constituted harassment and was a
breach of Clause 4.
4. The newspaper said that the complainant was a notorious
Twitter troll, who had had 36 different Twitter accounts over an 18-month
period, as his accounts are regularly suspended. He refers to himself as
“Britain’s vilest troll”, and has previously appeared in television
documentaries defending his actions. The newspaper said that because of his
notoriety, the complainant’s full address had previously been published on
social media sites, and he had been “doxxed”, which meant that his identifying
personal details – including his address, mobile telephone number, and a link to
a photograph of the exterior of his home – had been published online. The
newspaper did not accept that its publication of his partial address posed any
intrusion, or that the incidents cited by the complainant since the article’s
publication could be linked to its article. It noted that the complainant was
regularly tweeting for up to 18 hours per day, and that this included dozens of
comments which could be deemed offensive, and could provoke a hostile response.
5. The newspaper said that it was central to the article
that the complainant lived in Chelmsford, as that was what gave the story news
value for its readers. It said that it was standard practice in regional
newspapers to publish the addresses of subjects of articles, and that the
complainant’s house number was omitted; there were around 20 houses on the
road. Several “R. Ambridges” were listed locally, and so it had been important
to publish his address in order to correctly identify him. In April 2014 the
complainant had received abusive messages and death threats via his employer,
but the newspaper was not aware of any more recent threats, and it noted that
the complainant had not supplied any evidence of death threats, nor had a
report been made to the police. Nonetheless, when the newspaper had been
contacted by the complainant directly, it had removed his address from the
online article, as a gesture of goodwill.
Relevant Code Provisions
6. Clause 3 (Privacy)
i) Everyone is entitled to respect for his or her private
and family life, home, health and correspondence, including digital
communications.
ii) Editors will be expected to justify intrusions into any
individual’s private life without consent. Account will be taken of the
complainant’s own public disclosures of information.
Clause 4 (Harassment)
i) Journalists must not engage in intimidation, harassment
or persistent pursuit.
The Public Interest
iii) The Regulator will consider the extent to which
material is already in the public domain, or will become so.
Findings of the Committee
7. The Committee generally takes the view that newspapers
are entitled to publish the partial addresses of subjects of articles.
Nonetheless, it considers each case on its merits, and in this instance,
serious consideration had to be given to the fact that the newspaper had been
aware that the complainant had previously received death threats. This had
clear potential relevance to the question of whether the publication of his
address would intrude into his private life by posing a safety risk to him and
his family.
8. The Editors’ Code requires that the Committee considers
the extent to which material is already in the public domain, as this has the
potential to mitigate the intrusion posed by publication of material which
could otherwise breach Clause 3. The complainant’s full address had already
been placed in the public domain, prior to publication of the article under
complaint, by virtue of postings by other internet users. Extensive personal
information had been published about the complainant online, including his full
new address. In this context, it was not clear that the publication, in the
newspaper, of the partial address posed a specific threat to his safety. It was
notable in any case that none of the hostile activity cited by the complainant
in the period since the article was published appeared to have been directed to
his home address; rather, he had referred to concerns about a threat to his
wife’s workplace, information which had not been published by the newspaper,
and threats directed to his Twitter account. The Committee concluded that there
was no breach of Clause 3.
9. The terms of Clause 4 generally relate to the conduct of
journalists during the newsgathering process. The publication of a number of
articles about the same person would not usually amount to harassment under the
terms of the Editors’ Code. The newspaper had been entitled to report on the
on-going controversy regarding the complainant’s online activities. This did
not amount to a breach of Clause 4.
Conclusions
10. The complaint was not upheld.
Remedial Action Required
N/A
Date complaint received: 19/12/2014
Date decision issued: 20/02/2015