The chair of the new press regulator has said that the Sunday Mirror story which forced Brooks Newmark to quit as minister for civil society, was so serious that it would have been investigated even without the complaint made by MP Mark Pritchard.
Sir Alan Moses, chair of the newly-formed Independent Press Standards Organisations (Ipso), was reported in The Guardian as saying that the article was a “matter of public concern”, after a male freelance reporter posed as a young Tory PR woman on Twitter and prompted Newmark to send the reporter explicit images of himself.
Newmark resigned from the role as minister for civil society after two months in the job on Saturday, as soon as the news leaked out that the story would appear on the front pages on Sunday. It was announced that Rob Wilson, MP for Reading East, will take over the position.
A spokesperson from Ipso told Civil Society News that the regulator may well have investigated the article proactively if there hadn’t been a complaint, although this was unnecessary as a complaint had already been made. He said Ipso can make the decision to investigate a story or incident without a complaint, and that the complaints committee would be responsible for making that decision.
Ipso will investigate whether the story was a breach of editorial code, and the Sunday Mirror will have to prove that its actions were in the public interest.
Moses said: “They will have to justify what they did, having regard to the fact that the editors’ code is absolutely clear that this sort of method is only permissible in circumstances where no other means of discovering evidence of that which is already suspected exists.”
The Sunday Mirror has faced criticism about the journalism, which saw several MPs contacted by the reporter. Pritchard, who was one of the MPs to be contacted, complained to Ipso.
He had told the BBC: “It is in the public interest that [the Mirror's] actions are fully investigated. This is the first real test as to whether the new body, Ipso, has any teeth."
It has also been confirmed that the freelance reporter who contacted Newmark and other MPs under the pseudonym of Sophie Wittams was Alex Wickham, a journalist who works for the Guido Fawkes blog.
The blog, which is owned by Paul Staines, has defended Wickham’s journalism practices.
In a post it said: “This was no fishing operation, it was a narrowly targeted effort. The Sophie Wittams Twitter account followed almost 100 MPs as part of the cover story – not to target them – which is obvious given that many of them were women MPs and the list included the Prime Minister. There was no intention to trap the PM.”
The blog concluded by saying that if Ipso does find against the Sunday Mirror, it “won’t prove it has teeth” but will prove “that 'media standards' are really a form of censorship that will protect the powerful from having their wrongdoings uncovered”.
It said: “This blog will never bow to the censors – we will continue to use subterfuge and clandestine methods to go after wrong ‘uns – there is no other way.”
