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Mercury names youths at centre of Pilkington case

A regional editor has explained why he took the decision to go against the Press Complaints Commission’s code of conduct and name the youths at the centre of the Fiona Pilkington tragedy.

Keith Perch, acting editor of the Leicester Mercury, said the case of the mother who killed herself and her own daughter after years of harassment had raised “important questions” for the paper’s news team.

The PCC code discourages papers from identifying children under the age of 16 involved in crime, while the law itself gives protection to juveniles appearing in court.

However, the Mercury went ahead and named the youths – one of whom had already been dubbed “Street Rat” by The Sun – after deciding that what Keith called the “pretence at anonymity” was “ridiculous.”

Writing on his blog, Keith said: “Our first reaction was not to name the family and particularly the two younger boys. But after some discussion we decided to do the opposite – to name the boys and use their photographs.

“What was behind the decision? Primarily, it was because any pretence that these boys had anonymity was ridiculous. Everybody in the area knew the identity of the boys even before the national papers got involved.

“It was clear from our discussions with neighbours that they were well-known in the area and their links to the Pilkington case were common knowledge – not naming them would have made our article look very odd and would not have ‘protected’ the boys in any way.”

The Mercury also decided to name three other vulnerable families who had got in touch with the paper to complain of having been harassed by the youths in a similar way with little or no protection from the police or other authorities.

Said Keith: “The question was: should we run these claims based on nothing other than what the families said?

“We decided we would because it was important to point out that the Pilkington case was not an isolated incident and although we had nothing to corroborate the individual claims of each family, in a way they corroborated each other.

“In a general discussion about the way the police and social services should respond to such incidents, the detailed facts are largely irrelevant – what’s important here is that there are several families who felt harassed and felt that they did not get the support they needed.

“That’s why we not only decided to highlight that other families suffered at the same time as the Pilkingtons, but added a line to our article asking whether anybody is still suffering.”

Comments

happyjack (01/10/2009 10:23:39)
I hope Keith and his team keep up the good work but.. Having worked in Leicestershire years ago it was hardly a secret that Barwell and Earl Shilton could be rough ie could be hard news areas. I wonder when the Mercury last had a reporter out there on the patch, when they last spoke to people or councillors there. It’s always a valid line about police press offices restricting what the press get told but if the police aren’t even logging all the incidents then that’s a real role for old-style reporting however many staff cuts there may have been.

Tom Green (01/10/2009 11:45:21)
Full credt to The Mercury for naming these people. I hope that your extra line to ask if people are still suffering from these scum might produce enough evidence to get any offenders under arrest and interviewed, with parents having to get themselves off their behinds to be there. If parents cannot parent, the state, unfortunately, must take over disciplinary roles.