AddThis SmartLayers

Watchdog clears local news site of leaking judge’s details to national

Twitter_-_KentOnline_400x400A judge who accused a regional news website of leaking details about a user account he held with it to a national newspaper has had his claim thrown out.

Jason Dunn-Shaw complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation after the Daily Mail ran two articles in February alleging his account on the Kent Online site had been used to criticise other readers who had left comments on stories about court proceedings he had been involved in.

The account, run under the pseudonym ‘Querelle’, had defended a suspended sentence which Mr Dunn-Shaw had passed in his capacity as a recorder on a woman who admitted dangerous driving, and another case in which he had acted as counsel for the defence.

In both cases, other Kent Online readers had described the sentences imposed as “too lenient” and had queried whether ‘Querelle’ was a friend or relative of the defendants after posts were submitted from the account challenging this opinion.

The Daily Mail article reported Mr Dunn-Shaw as saying he had not made these comments, and that they had probably been made by his partner, who also used the same account to post comments on Kent Online stories.

Mr Dunn-Shaw complained to IPSO under Clause 2 (Privacy), claiming that in order for the Daily Mail to have identified that this was his account, they must have accessed information Kent Online held on the account.

The complainant said that for this reason, he believed that Kent Online had disclosed the fact that he operated the account to the Daily Mail.

Kent Online denied it had revealed Mr Dunn-Shaw’s identity, adding it did not know how the Daily Mail had identified him as the owner of the account.

However, in its response to IPSO the website said any individual suspicious of comments left by ‘Querelle’ based on detailed knowledge of the proceedings in question could have entered the pseudonym and the names of those mentioned in the court report into a search engine, which would lead them to find that Mr Dunn-Shaw’s name is openly linked to another internet profile under the same pseudonym on a different website.

IPSO ruled that, due to the fact such a simple internet search would reveal the information used by the Daily Mail, that Kent Online had not disclosed the details in question to the newspaper.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.

A separate complaint by Mr Dunn-Shaw against the Daily Mail was also rejected.