Saturday 9 June 2012

'We don’t report pregnancies unless confirmed by the subject' (part 3)

This blog has twice noted the difference between what MailOnline's Martin Clarke told the Leveson Inquiry about reporting on pregnancy, and what his website actually does.

Lord Leveson was told by Clarke:

we don’t report pregnancies unless confirmed by the subject

and

we're not allowed to say somebody's pregnant unless they've confirmed it.

Recent articles about Drew Barrymore, Kate Middleton and Megan Fox suggested that wasn't entirely accurate.

And on 7 June, Charlotte Stamper spotted two more MailOnline articles which contradicted Clarke.

There was another article about Fox:


It includes the line:

The 26-year-old actress - who is understood to be pregnant with her first child - has so far refused to confirm or deny reports she is expecting.

And MailOnline also published an article about Gisele Bundchen:


This one begins by admitting:

She has so far failed to respond to rumours that she is pregnant.

So why did Clarke tell Leveson:'we don’t report pregnancies unless confirmed by the subject'?

6 comments:

  1. ...is there some way of feeding these apparent contradictions back into Leveson for his consideration. I'm sure he'd like to know that some witnesses seem to have 'mis-spoke'.

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  2. Perhaps Leveson could become a permanent, ongoing, real time enquiry?

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  3. doesn't that make him in contempt or something? I take it they have to swear on the bible or something?

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  4. Good to see that real news is also still the most important thing to the Mail.

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  5. It's an enquiry, not a court of law. I don't think the same rules apply.

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  6. Surely in an enquiry into press ethics and standards the newspapers should at least try and appear to have some ethics and standards...by just plain lieing it's hardly going to help their case when Leveson makes a final decision on what needs to be done.

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