Too little, too late.
During my lunch break on Thursday, I watched Cathy Newman “interview” Jordan Peterson. He talked about responsibility and power. How society needs its men to grow up. It rang true because that very morning the Daily Mail published a correction, after they ran this front page in December last year:
The story is about Abd Al-Waheed. It refers to him as a “suspected Iraqi insurgent.” It alleges that he received £33,000 of compensation for being held in custody for “too long,” that he made bombs. Except he wasn’t, didn’t, and can’t.
Abd Al-Waheed was indeed captured in a raid on his sister’s house, except the target was his brother-in-law. During the search soldiers found explosives, but not Al-Waheed’s brother-in-law.
A British Army Review Committee cleared Abd from any wrongdoing, he was judged to pose no security risk, and have no affiliation to his brother-in-law’s activity. He remained in captivity for a further 33 days.
£3,300 of his compensation payment covered the unlawful detention. The other 30 grand was for the beating and inhuman treatment he also received.
Disregard the fact the Mail are using falsehood to conjure acceptance of their cause – which is pretty fucking generous because that’s the definition you’ll get if you look up ‘propaganda’ in a political dictionary. But disregard it all the same, because we’re going to focus on something other than the mundane predictability of Daily Mail racism, which is extensive and well documented.
The correction sits on page two, right next to the weather. I missed it the first time I went looking for it.
It is galling that is seen as sufficient, parading an IPSO logo as if the paper’s doing anything more than speaking lies to power.
It’s difficult to countenance this case with the dogged reporting that characterises much Mail news coverage. Plausible deniability or wilful ignorance don’t factor. Afford them the presumption of guilt they bestowed on Abd. The apology and retraction is factored into the front page decision making.
In my view, they know it’s dubious or, as in this instance, wholly untrue but figure that’s worth the cost of a hidden away apology.
People have argued that a newspaper apology should be published as large and prominent as the original falsehood. Until editors stop posthumously fact checking their front pages, it doesn’t seem to be a bad solution.
Perhaps that’s why people place such astronomically low faith in newspapers when ranking media by trust, accuracy and impartiality.
Until those same papers start letting the truth get in the way of a good story, someone’s got to do a better job of holding them to account.
