Journalists' Association, FAPE, handed down a Judgment against 'The Olive Press' and Jon Clarke for 'Maddie' article

In 2013 FAPE, the Federación de Asociaciones de Periodistas de España - the Spanish Journalists’ Association, handed down a judgment against “The Olive Press” and Jon Clarke for having published a long article entitled “Maddie? Yes, but not the one we were looking for...” and found it infringed Articles 4 and 13 of the FAPE Ethical Code for not having respected the right to personal and family privacy of M.A., a minor, and of her parents, Mr. L. A. and Mrs. R. E., and also did not bother to check the sources of the information.

FAPE Judgment against Olive Press 2013/82  

RESOLUCIÓN 2013/82  

http://www.comisiondequejas.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/09/82.pdf  

 

The judgment continues [my translation]. “In the reasoning of this resolution it states that the journalist has acted with remarkable flippancy and published a scandalous story based on very flimsy material. The information published in "The Olive Press" is an example of irresponsible sensationalism to attract the attention of the prospective reader. Its content is pure charlatanry, "gossip" in the language in which it has been written and in journalistic language “amarillismo", [sensationalist journalism] always reprehensible but much more when an innocent subject of the information can be endangered”  

 

amarillismo  translates as Yellow Journalism  

FAPE Resolucion 2013/82

La información publicada en “The Olive Press” es un ejemplo de sensacionalismo

irresponsable para atraer la atención del eventual lector. Su contenido es

charlatanería en estado puro, “gossip” en el idioma en el cual se ha escrito y en el

lenguaje periodístico “amarillismo “, siempre reprochable pero mucho más cuando se

puede poner en peligro al sujeto pasivo de la información que irrumpe

inesperadamente en el ámbito de la intimidad de la menor, una niña de ocho años,

sacándola a la luz pública con perjuicio de su estabilidad emocional e incluso con

riesgo para su integridad personal. 

[my translation]. “In the reasoning of this resolution it states that the journalist has acted with remarkable flippancy and published a scandalous story based on very flimsy material. The information published in "The Olive Press" is an example of irresponsible sensationalism to attract the attention of the prospective reader.   Its content is pure charlatanry, "gossip" in the language in which it has been written and in journalistic language “amarillismo", [sensationalist journalism]  always reprehensible but much more when an innocent subject of the information can be endangered”

VII.- RESOLUCIÓN

Teniendo en consideración los anteriores razonamientos de la ponencia, esta

Comisión de Arbitraje, Quejas y Deontología del periodismo ACUERDA que don Jon

Clarke, editor de “The Olive Press” y doña Wendy Williams, autora del reportaje

“Maddie? Yes … but not the right one” han infringido los arts. 4º y 13 del Código

Deontológico FAPE por no haber respetado el derecho a la intimidad personal y

familiar de Madeleine A., menor de edad, y de sus padres, el señor L. A. y la señora

R. E., ni haber cuidado de contrastar las fuentes de la información, no dándoles

además la oportunidad de ofrecer su propia versión sobre los hechos.

Madrid, 6 de noviembre de 2013

[my translation].   In 2013 FAPE, the Federación de Associationes de Periodistas de España - the Spanish Journalists’ Association, – “is agreed that Mr Jon Clarke, editor of “The Olive Press” and Wendy Williams, the author of the report, “Maddie? Yes, but not the one we were looking for . . .”  infringed Articles 4 and 13 of the FAPE Ethical Code for not having respected the right to personal and family privacy of M.A., a minor, and of her parents, Mr. L. A. and Mrs. R. E., and also neither bothered to check the sources of the information, nor gave them the opportunity to offer their own version of events.”

Madrid, 6 November 2013

“My search for Madeleine’. Jon Clarke - 2021 “The love of money is the root of all evil.” 1 Timothy 6:10

More story changes, more errors, more nonsense, more mistakes, but most importantly

MORE MONEY

In this and the following chapter I shall list and explain a number of issues in the book,

for example 

• Money
• Schoolboy Howlers
• Changes in the story
• Mistakes, errors, grossly negligent reporting, or downright lies
• Deliberate Confusions
• Nonsense - and libel
• Inconsistencies

We shall also examine what the book reveals about Clarke’s personality, about his code of conduct, about his view of the world and the rights of others, about Integrity, Objectivity, Professional competence, Confidentiality, and Professional behaviour.

***
First permit me to explain the most disgusting and reprehensible episode to which Clarke has so far confessed.
It involves Money. Lots of it
I say the most disgusting and reprehensible, though it ranks alongside the Murat scandal as we shall see,
[see Chapter 43, The Framing of Robert Murat] and in both cases was clearly driven by Clarke’s naked greed without any regard to personal freedoms, dignity, privacy or respect for others.
We may take it as read that the facts did not come into it.
Are those strong words ? You decide.

In his book, at page 36/7 Clarke says
“The opportunity had arisen after an unexpected windfall while working on a feature about the movie, Cold Mountain, filmed in Romania and starring Jude Law and Nicole Kidman. I’d come across photographs of the leading actors ‘getting intimate’ at the wrap party. They dutifully made the front page of The Sun, paid for our trip to Spain and, by the time the story had been followed up by Hello! Magazine and the rest, had paid for a deposit on a stone farmhouse in Ronda.”

I’d come across . . . in other words Clarke did not take the photos. He wasn’t there. He either bought them or ‘acquired’ them in some other fashion, legal or not.
He then sold them to the papers he mentions, and very possibly wrote the editorial copy which accompanied them, since he was ‘working on a feature’ about the film. His quip “and the rest’ included his favourite Red Top – the Daily Mail, and indicates he was paid by others in the same journalistic swamp.

This all seems fairly normal gutter-press sensationalist and intrusive journalism until we follow up what then happened.

The story alleged a three month extramarital affair between the two, and further that Kidman had actively encouraged Law, who was at that time still married. The photos were included as “proof’.
It was of course, totally untrue, baseless and without foundation.
Kidman sued. She won. Substantial amounts in damages were awarded against the Sun and the Mail. The Sunday Telegraph which had been seduced into printing a version of the story made an unconditional apology.

The British director of the film, Anthony Minghella, was quoted as saying –
“it is all lies.”
“the "poisonous" stories circulating about the pair are in danger of thwarting Kidman's chances of winning an Oscar.”
“the party where the pair were reportedly pictured acting closer than friends was attended by some 30 of the cast.”
"Nobody seems to care about the facts getting in the way of the story.”
"There have been so many poisonous things written about Nicole recently."

REFS AND COPIES IN APPENDIX

Clarke’s photo and story caused the Sun to pay out, the Mail to pay out and the Telegraph to apologise,
but he STILL got enough money to buy a farmhouse in which he is perfectly happy for his wife and children to live, despite its eternal grubby and tainted origins. And he seems both proud of it, and happy to tell the world that it was he who inflicted such immense misery on Kidman and Law, and their respective families.

His wife is not unintelligent and must know the origins of the unexpected windfall of funds used to buy the house she now lives in, and the enormous damage her husband’s lies caused to another woman – like her, a mother – and to her children, not to mention to Law, who also has three children, and was married at the time.
Clarke claims to be protective of his own family.
Other people’s families, it seems, can be destroyed so long as it makes money for him.
She may one day care to reflect on his willingness to sacrifice a mother and her family for personal gain.
Clarke’s children may one day find out for themselves the depths to which their father will sink in the pursuit of personal gain in his ‘profession’.
It is all in the public domain. Google and the internet work in mysterious ways, and children grow up quickly.

Kidman donated her substantial damages to FARA, a charity for abandoned children in Romania.

Clarke kept his contaminated lucre and bought himself a farmhouse.

My Search for Madeleine McCann – Jon Clarke. The framing of Robert Murat

What follows is from Jon Clarke’s new book, much of it in his own words.

Readers must decide for themselves whether this is ‘well within the bounds of normal. . .’ journalism, or is something more egregious that should be exposed as the grubby money-grabbing gutter-press tactics it seems to be.

For the last 14 years those who have followed this dreadful case have been wrong in one significant particular. We had all believed that Lori Campbell of the Sunday Mirror was the origin of the case developed against Robert Murat, the ex-pat who lived in Praia da Luz and stepped forward to help the McCanns and the police by interpreting between English and Portuguese.

Murat lives a short distance away from the centre of activity, was well known in the area through his business as an estate agent, was divorced and had a daughter about the same age as Madeleine. He tried to help.

For his pains he was identified as ‘strange”, then identified as the person who had taken Madeleine, then had a campaign of investigation stirred up against him, resulting in his house being searched, his private life being exposed, his being interviewed and given ‘arguido’ (formal suspect) status, equivalent to being ‘Under Caution’ in the English system, being vilified and abused in the British Tabloid press, until eventually the PJ realised he was nothing to do with the case, released him from his status, and he subsequently won damages from the press who had hounded him for so long.

Initially Lori Campbell took apparent pride in having been the first to point him out.

With the publication of Clarke’s book we find he claims that extremely dubious “honour” for himself.
So in yet another part of this murky story the red arrow points back to Clarke.

In his book Clarke describes himself as starting as a “stringer’, a free-lance reporter. He then styles himself as a Journalist, and an Investigative journalist,
But from his arrival at PdL his clearly stated aim is not to report, or investigate the circumstances to find out what happened and who might have done it –
It is to FIND MADELEINE, to SOLVE the case.
“One Reporter’s 14-Year Hunt To Solve Europe’s Most Harrowing Crime”
and at page 24 – including the hilarious malapropism –
“From the very first moment I arrived in Praia da Luz that May morning in 2007, my overbearing [sic] drive was to solve the mystery and find young Maddie.”

(We must remember that in Clarke’s world the one to find Madeleine gets the prize. Not just a fat cheque for an article, but acclaim, TV shows, endless interviews, book reviews. . . It is worth a fortune – to anyone other than a Police officer. This is a man who freely admits and seems proud of having sold ‘stolen’ photos of an intensely private and intimate moment between two people and buying his family home with the proceeds. Some people’s moral compass apparently allows them to exist like that.)

Suddenly, without even changing clothes in a phone box, he has transformed from mild mannered reporter Jon Clarke-Kent into a latter day Supersleuth dedicated to “The never ending battle for truth, and justice. . .” The Righter of Wrongs and Solver of Crimes.

But perhaps Clarke-Kent should take heed of another Super-hero’s words. “With great power, there must also come great responsibility."
Clarke does have great power. He owns a newspaper, and has access to the Tabloid press of the UK, and the English speaking world. Even if his words are challenged the damage has been done, they remain in print and on-line forever. What he says stays said, and cannot be un-said. That is Power.

But he isn’t a detective. He has never done the job, has no experience of how it actually works. He may have seen it in operation, but clearly has no understanding of the mechanism, hence his endless criticism of the slow pace of the investigation.

There is nothing inherently wrong with Morse, or Miss Marple, or Lord Peter Wimsey, nor yet with Sherlock Holmes or Maigret. It is just that they are fiction. They include some cracking good stories, but they are just that. Cleverly constructed stories.

Real detective work is largely grindingly slow attention to detail, relevant or not, endless TTBD (things to be done), statements from people who clearly have nothing at all to do with the actual case but who must be eliminated so that ultimately you DO follow Sherlock Holmes and think – “When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” (Case Book of SH)

And that is what Clarke and others like him do not understand.
In the TV and Tabloid world the Ace Detective solves a major crime in 28 minutes, including the commercial break, and usually by going down one single track, and finding success at the end.

That can happen of course, but it is usually either coincidental, or the case was so obvious from the start that little background work was necessary.

*******

Anyone who starts from 10pm Thursday 3/5/7 and accepts uncritically that Madeleine McCann was abducted from her bed sometime during that evening is at a huge advantage.

The brilliance and ease of this approach is that you then do not have to concern yourself with the lack of evidence, or with the contradictions in the statements. You do not even have to consider the evidence which points away from that. Because you start AFTER the event.

You do not have to construct or explain a detailed scenario, and you can happily condemn as trolls or evil or incompetent anyone who does not follow what you KNOW, because you have been TOLD.
Like the GNR, the PJ, the MetPol, the State Prosecutor, The Appeal Court, the Supreme Court, the compilers of the “Gerry McCann’s blogs”, “Nigel’s McCann files”, and the host of discussion fora.
You can dismiss them. All evil vicious trolls pedalling filth.

Because you know better.
You know Madeleine was abducted, because someone said so, even though they have not provided you with sufficient evidence for you to think it through and to agree or disagree.
It becomes a matter not of mere Belief, but of Faith, and therefore anyone who says anything different is automatically a Heretic, an Apostate, and Infidel, and as in a well known Bronze Age religion can be condemned to death.
As was the late Brenda Leyland. RIP.

When someone produces concrete evidence which disturbs the original article of Faith, it challenges the very foundation of that Belief and you have no choice but to lash out and silence them. Never can you be seen to allow questions which attack the Belief, and never can you be put to the test of replying or offering counter-evidence.

You Know you are Right, and everyone else is Wrong. It is as simple as that.

And we have seen it many times. In newspapers and in this book, and in the courts, McCanns v. Bennett, and McCanns v. Amaral and others, where there was no attempt to argue the central issue. Both were clever legal manipulations and became about a procedural issue in the first case, and personal rights to reputation in the second. The question of the alleged abduction was not put, though on the record the judge in the first, Tugendhat J, took the point himself and as he passed judgment in the way the law forced him to, mused about the legal position if Madeleine had NOT been abducted.

(We can help him there. There will have been multiple cases of Perjury, conspiracy to commit Perjury, Malicious Prosecution, and Wrongful Imprisonment as a consequence. The punishment will be condign. The damages exemplary and punitive.)