Why didn't journalists look more closely at charity's 'bullying Brown' claims?

The papers, TV and radio news today are full of stories about Gordon Brown being a bully, or at least by strong implication that is the story many have run, based on unsubstantiated claims from an organisation calling itself the 'National Bullying Helpline' - though what Help such disclosure really provides to victims of bullying is already a subject for heated debate.

The organisation's chief executive  - Christine Pratt - has gone public, claiming to have received calls from within Downing Street outlining instances of bullying.

The only problem is the source of this story, its motives and agenda, are all open to question and should certainly have been more thoroughly investigated by the media before a single word of these claims was repeated.

First the obvious objection to the story: why on earth would an organisation which claims to help victims of bullying disclose any details of the cases it hears? Surely that is a gross breach of confidentiality and could easily spark a witch-hunt within organisations where bullying really is a problem.

Already alarm bells should have been ringing for any responsible journalist.

Pratt

But maybe they thought Christine Pratt simply hadn't considered this, her claims were poor judgement and the story simply too good to ignore, whatever the truth. Bad news for the charity, bad news for Pratt but good news for hard-pressed editors with gaps in their pages or schedules.

I would hope though that all journalists, like everybody else, must be aware of a basic rule of common sense: if something looks too good to be true, it almost certainly is. That rule would be doubly well-applied to 'Sunday-for-Monday' stories like this which often carry some kind of PR agenda, such is the recognised window of opportunity that Sunday represents for soft news.

So, a second possible explanation then is that Pratt thought the apparent breach of confidentiality was a price worth paying to gain some publicity for her charity and its cause and didn't think through how this story would gather momentum - and subsequently backfire - if she allowed Gordon Brown to be falsely linked to it.

She has since - somewhat urgently - repeated during a live interview with BBC Breakfast News that there were no complaints specifically about Brown bullying (so there goes the 'public interest' defence). So, even if it is true, this story could actually be about a cleaner at Downing Street, being bullied by a private contractor, both of whom could barely be more removed from Gordon Brown or the Labour government if they worked at Conservative Central HQ.

A third explanation is that Pratt has been played by 'troublemakers' - whether prank calls from the public or journalists or political opponents placing a story by stealth. Pratt can't publicly disprove that of course and nor can the media because she's already in enough trouble about diclosing confidential information as it is.

Fourth explanation is that Pratt was motivated, or incentivised to act, by either political or business influences, given the National Bullying Helpline's close links to the Conservative party and a number of commercial organisations. (You can find more about the National Bullying Helpline here.)

Best intentions

As with all details of this story, we can only speculate - whatever 'facts' we think we have seen in the papers or subsequently online. I would stress, there are no grounds to assume Pratt acted with anything other than the best, if slightly ill-judged, intentions or that her claims are genuine, if skewed by the subsequent coverage.

But there is certainly suspicion. Lots of it. And it's a sad indictment that it again took the uproar of the Twitter community to make journalists look twice at this story.

Anybody advising Pratt should certainly have second-guessed the likely accusations and the way they have overshadowed the claims she was making, irrespective of validity. And if there was the heavy hand of PR moving the chess pieces around this checkered story, Pratt would certainly have been better advised to stay quiet, or, once the cat was out of the bag, at least look a little less like a stereotypical Tory for her media appearances to dodge suggestions of political allegiance. But a failure of media training is the least of her worries now her credibility, and that of her charity are being called into question.  

All we do know is that whatever the facts, should they ever emerge, there were certainly enough grey areas and enough well-reasoned doubts about the credibility of the story to have made any journalist approach with great caution. But they rushed in irrespective and have been back-pedaling ever since.

The fact so many journalist simply churned out copy accusing anybody of bullying, without checking their facts, is a very worrying failure.

Comments

[Adam Westbrook]

The media's coverage of this story (I think) stems back to the generally accepted practice not to report fact, but to report 'what someone said'.

Ask a news agency like PA, and that's what they do - they report what someone has said, regardless of motives/politics/actual accuracy... and for most media organisations that is enough to warrant printing or broadcasting it.