Press Complaints Commission Refuses To Uphold Politician’s Complaint Against Blogger

The Press Complaints Commission has refused to find in favor of Viscount Monckton, who filed a complaint concerning a post by writer/journalist George Monbiot on his Guardian blog. Said the PCC in part:

The blog entry, by George Monbiot, commented on the announcement that Viscount Monckton had joined the UK Independence Party. The complainant said that the piece listed a number of claims that he had made and wrongly cast doubt on their validity….The complainant maintained that all of his assertions on these points were true, but the journalist had suggested otherwise. The article also ascribed statements to him that he had never made: that he claimed to have won the Falklands war; that he had claimed to have made himself a gold pin to prove his Nobel-prize winning credentials; and that he had previously ‘boasted’ of telling untrue stories.

In addition, the piece referred to the complainant as a ‘swivel-eyed maniac’, which he said was a discriminatory reference to a physical disability (proptosis) he suffered as the result of having had Graves’ disease.

The newspaper defended most of the disputed points. While the complainant may indeed have read the draft Copenhagen Treaty, he could not have known with certainty, when speaking in mid-October, what precisely would be signed in mid-December. It was legitimate, therefore, for Mr Monbiot to jokingly refer to the complainant as a clairvoyant. As to whether the Treaty referred to ‘world government’, the newspaper acknowledged that it did but said it was clear that the Treaty was not envisaging a supranational government to replace national governments.

…

With regard to the complainant’s claim to be a member of the House of Lords, the newspaper pointed out that, while the complainant may have a hereditary title, this had been irrelevant to membership of the Upper House of Parliament since 1996. The complainant himself accepted that he had no right to sit or vote in the House of Lords. The question of whether the IPCC had taken account of the complainant’s ‘contribution’ to its 2007 report was irrelevant….As to the claim that he had ‘boasted’ of telling untrue stories, the newspaper pointed to an article from the Scotsman (to which the blog had itself linked) in which the complainant admitted to telling a tall tale for personal benefit….

The Guardian accepted that the complainant had not made himself a gold pin (it had been made for, and presented to, him by a third party) and it offered to place a clarification on the blog. It also noted that he disputed having once claimed to have won the Falklands War, contrary to a reported comment in an Observer article from 2007, to which the blog linked and which had not been the subject of a PCC complaint. The Guardian said that it was willing to clarify publicly the context in which the remark had previously been reported. But, since there had been no complaint to the PCC about the Observer piece, and since the Observer journalist stood by his article, it did not consider additional action to be reasonable.

As to the complaint about discrimination, the Guardian said George Monbiot had been unaware of the complainant’s illness. The blog had used the phrase ‘swivel-eyed maniac’ as part of a direct quote from another blog (about which there had been no complaint)….Nonetheless, it understood the complainant’s concerns and offered to remove the description from the blog.

The complainant said these measures were inadequate and asked the Guardian to publish a full letter of reply from him.

Read commentary from Roy Greenslade here.