A weekly newspaper journalist was threatened with violence after a family took exception to an inquest report he had written.
The Cambrian News has published a statement defending itself after a Facebook post by the family of Adrian Kramp complaining about the coverage of an inquest into his death was widely shared online.
The post by his father Grzegorz, which has been shared almost 300 times by other Facebook users, mentioned he had visited the office of the Aberystwyth-based News to meet Caleb Spencer, the journalist who attended the hearing, to “smash his laying [sic] face”.
The paper had reported coroner Peter Brunton as having recorded a verdict of suicide, noting a fine Adrian had yet to pay after being released from prison was a “significant depressive factor” in the case.
The viral Facebook post by Grzegroz Kramp
But his father took issue with this, claiming the News “made up” their own story after he and his wife Barbara refused an interview with the paper after the verdict was given.
More than 100 comments, most of them negative about the News, were left under the post by others.
In its response, published on its own Facebook page, the News wrote: “The Cambrian News feels it is necessary to defend itself following untrue and abusive comments published on social media today about an inquest report into the death of a 22-year-old man from Aberystwyth, Adrian Kramp.
“One of our journalists has been threatened with violence for reporting so-called ‘lies’ and other comments have been made of a very threatening and abusive nature. We express our condolences to Adrian’s family for their loss.
“However, everything in the article was based solely on what was said at the inquest with accurate quotes from the coroner himself. And we have offered the family the chance to explain their grievances in a follow-up article.”
However the newspaper’s statement then resulted in dozens more negative comments.
In a post on his own personal Facebook page, Caleb said he had been subject to “hurtful and untrue” comments.
He wrote: “Since its publication, I have been threatened to have ‘my face smashed in’ for publishing so-called ‘lies’. People have inevitably jumped on the ‘I hate the Cambrian News’ bandwagon with threatening and abusive comments. This isn’t the first time I have been threatened following an inquest story.
“There is zero conjecture in the piece I have written. Everything I have put in the article was based solely on what the coroner said. I have backed these statements up with quotes from the coroner, and indeed Adrian’s mother.
“Yet people fail to understand this and direct their ire at me and the Cambrian News, rather than the coroner. I express my condolences to Adrian’s family for their loss. However, I am not going to be made the scapegoat for anger which should be directed elsewhere.”
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Sadly, this comes with the territory. As I mentioned in another context I was threatened while having a pee in a break from covering a highly controversial case.
Social media has made it a whole lot worse.
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May I respectfully suggest that perhaps a greater effort to sympathise with a grieving father may have helped here. I find the sympathies extended by Caleb less than expected by the best journalists. Coming out in defence hasn’t helped. It’s as if you pit your integrity against a dead son.
Celeb, you know your story was a true and accurate account. Sometimes that’s all you have.
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It’s not unusual, in my long experience, for bereaved families to take exception to even the most factually accurate report of their tragedy. The depressing new twist here is that so many members of the public weigh in on the aggrieved family’s side via social media. The concept that the newspaper’s professional reporting of judicial proceedings should carry more weight than the opinion of some ill-informed bystander on Facebook seems to have been lost somewhere along the way.
Interesting times….
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Yes it is a sad time for the family and sub-consciously there is still a social stigma in many quarters attached to a suicide. However, what many people forget is that such hearings are open to the public. Especially with court cases people can wander in from the street and sit and listen to a case unless the judge etc has ruled otherwise. Those who hid behind anonymity on social media not only often don’t understand this but don’t want to do so. I remember as a young reporter back in the 1960s wandering back to the newsroom fr a ct hearing with the father of a guy who had just been sent to prison threatening to bash my head in. Terrifying. He only stopped after the chief reporter, a man in his 50s, threatened to call the police – “and then we will report your court case.” Never heard anymore. Those were the days when the police wld have responded. How can they respond today when “bullies” hide behind social media knowing they are unlikely to be caught or found out.
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Can’t help but feel this may be a case of least said soonest mended. The original Facebook post may well be unfair and, of course, highly visible. But responding was only ever going to inflame the situation and provoke a backlash. If your reporting is generally responsible and fair, readers will see this – there’s no need to proclaim it.
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Reminds me of my days as a magistrates court reporter in a small town in East Anglia. People simply could not accept that we were allowed to report anything that came out in court. They assumed it was all our doing – Every Friday I would have to field calls from people unhappy that certain people, pubs, shops, etc, had been mentioned in the paper. Think it must be far worse now with social media to deal with
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Sorry, I just can’t see how this reporter could have made a “greater effort to sympathise with a grieving father” and why shouldn’t he defend himself against horrendous personal abuse including the threat of physical violence?
That said, his byline should not have been used on what is essentially a court report and we may have reached the point where the reporting of such inquests should be restricted to print and websites rather than the bearpit that is FB…
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Karl. You are so right. If you put news if this type or even responses on Facebook you invite the trolls and cowardly scum to vent their uninformed hatred.that’s modern life.
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Re Norfolk n Good: The problem is that while the majority of readers will think it is fair to report court cases they are not the ones who bother to react to a story – it is the trolls etc who do and social media has made it much worse. If reporters/papers were to put in print what many trolls say on social media it would the former who are in court for libel/contempt – not the latter who hid behind a veil of secrecy.
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I’m sure the conduct of the reporter in this case was entirely appropriate, and the father’s reaction, while understandable, unjustified. However, I do wonder (apropos of the other story on here today regarding TM journalists engaging with their audience on social media) whether some of the exchanges I witness all too often on Facebook and Twitter, in which alleged professionals quickly descend to the same level as the morons and bigots attacking them, haven’t encouraged the public to think that reporters are now public figures and hence fair game for the sort of abuse routinely dished out to any other minor celebrity. He who touches pitch will be defiled.
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Wordsmith – you may well be right. But if such posts only influence the opinions of people who don’t read the paper, why does it matter?
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