The murder of 14 year-old schoolgirl Jodi Jones near Edinburgh on 30 June 2003

[Suzie]

i was rather shocked by that.

I know, you had to have a lay down
 Nice to see they reported the facts without all the lurid headlines. Now if they were to keep reporting the facts, that would make some very interesting reading for their paying customers.

[nugnug]

oh yes i mean theres a mountian of inforemation about the case all there waiting for them.

[nugnug]

i wonder if we will hear anything from the sun.

[nugnug]

http://glasgowunihumanrights.blogspot.co.uk/

[sandra L]

Today was a big day in the progess of Luke's case, and I am very pleased with how it went - we got a great deal of media coverage and, as some posters have already discussed, even the Daily Record, which has been consistently negative for nine years, printed, for the first time, an article which reported only the facts.

The submission to the SCCRC took months to put together, and we had the help of some brilliant legal people - it's a very long, very hard route, as I know so many of you already now.

It was a huge shock, however, to get back from Glasgow, and hear on the news that there are plans to make lie detector tests mandatory for sex offenders, since Luke and Corinne (his mother) both took, and passed, lie detector tests earlier this year. If these tests are being considered reliable enough to decide whether or not dangerous sex offenders should be allowed liberty (or continued liberty), then surely they are reliable enough to at least suggest a re-examination of a terrible miscarriage of justice involving a 15 year old boy?

I have said elsewhere, I would love to see a test case challenging the "double standards" surrounding the use of the polygraph in the UK - I believe Jeremy took, and passed, a polygraph, I know Jordan Towers is desperate to take one, Luke and Corinne have taken them, and I read on this forum that Simon Hall wanted to take one - yet none of this is "admissible." I have also said elsewhere that the willingness to take the test is something worth consideration - Luke and Corinne said yes immediately when they were asked, even though they had no idea what the questions would be (as is the case, I believe, for anyone taking the test). Those who are actively asking to take the test are surely putting themselves at enormous risk if they are not telling the truth - either that, or they genuinely believe they can "fool" the test - either way, if the government is willing to pay for tests for sex offenders, then why not for those claiming innocence who want to take them?

Anyway, I just wanted to say thank you to everyone on here discussing Lukes case - it's good to see different support forums running threads supportive of other MoJs.

[OnceSaid]

And yet it seems they now have something to say. They used his proper name too.

Daily Record

Brilliant!!!  I think this is a major turning point. I would hope that they continue to report fairly, and accurately on this case.

[nugnug]

well if they want stories there is plenty there them to print all free and all right there for them all they need to do is copy.

they dont have to worry about being sued i mean nobody has sued us.

[sandra L]

Nor can they, nugnug. Or rather, they can try, and they would lose, because every single thing I have put into the public domain is backed up by paperwork.

In fact, if the papers wanted to lift anything from the WAP wesite/forum about Luke's case, I will appily show them the papers which back up the points they want to use, i exchange for a small donation to charities supporting the wrongly accused.

[OnceSaid]

Hi Sandra, just noticed your post.  I'm delighted to hear that today went well.  I hope that Luke gets to read all the press articles, especially the Daily Record as I think that is what is needed, all the tabloids and broadsheets to start getting the truth out there once and for all.

What a boost this will be for him, well done to everyone involved who made this happen.

[sandra L]

On a completely separate note, I often eat bombay mix or peanuts whilst working and the crumbs creep into my keyboard. Eventually, my posts have so many typos because the keys don't work properly, that I don't always manage to edit them all... that's when I know it's time to get the hoover out!

Oncesaid, thank you, it has been a long journey, often with no apparent progress, but we have never given up, and there has always been something going on behind the scenes, even if things have appeared quiet outwardly. Days like today are big achievements - we need to win over public opinion as much as legal process.

I haven't posted on other forums for a long time - the people who know me know why - but I realised that getting the stories of wrongly accused persons out to as wide an audience as possible is the only way to muster enough support and opinion to push for the changes to the justice systm that we need to help all MoJs.

So I have tentatively dipped a toe back into two forums - this one, and the Shirley McKie forum - we need to be working together. The system already isolates those suffering injustice - those of us fighting need to make sure we don't exacerbate that isolation by ending up fighting each other

[Chelsea]

How can this ever be achieved when one individual has single handedly destroyed that prospect ? The system are releieved by it, as they know its then been defragmented.

[sandra L]

Chelsea, no one person can "single handedly" destroy anything.

We have limited energy - we can choose to use it to focus on where we're going, or on what's in our way. Guess what we'll see, whichever one we decide to focus on?

I believe that if something is destroyed by people, then it's destroyed by everyone involved - if we give our energy to something we believe is destroying what we are trying to achieve, then we have given away that portion of our energy that could have been used to..... well, just achieve it!

Today, in moving one family enduring wrongful conviction forward, we gave hope to all families hoping to move their own circumstances forward - that's good enough for me.

[Chelsea]

Read that three times ! Makes sense, so I shall go back to thinking the way I used to., and hopefully feel happier too. Negative people just drain my energy. They make me feel depressed. When I meet older people like that, it makes me question the point of this world of ours.That said, your wisdom has cheered me up, as I believe in what you have said. Thanks

[sandra L]

The Scotsman have today run a story quoting the statement from Luke which we handed out to the media yesterday:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/i-m-an-innocent-lad-condemned-by-lies-and-errors-claims-luke-mitchell-1-2424857

Pretty good story (except, of course, I'm not a lawyer!!!) Good to see the media printing facts, at last.

[OnceSaid]

The Scotsman have today run a story quoting the statement from Luke which we handed out to the media yesterday:

http://www.scotsman.com/news/i-m-an-innocent-lad-condemned-by-lies-and-errors-claims-luke-mitchell-1-2424857

Pretty good story (except, of course, I'm not a lawyer!!!) Good to see the media printing facts, at last.

I laughed out loud when I read you were a lawyer, because you could probably do a better job than those claiming to be and getting paid handsomely for being lawyers.

Another good article, with no nonsense, thats what I like to see.


I was disappointed that the Daily Record didn't last long with there fair reporting.    I remember this guy Paul O'hare who wrote the article, (if one could call it that as its about a dozen lines), as he had written another unrelated article last year and his name stuck in my head as he got pelters for it by a blogger, as shit journalism.  Think the blogger was onto to something there.

Shit Journalism Digest #4
Just a quick one today, focusing on a local bit of news for me...

Last night, there was a 'bomb scare' at the Aberdeen University Hillhead Halls of Residence. I hesitate to call it a bomb scare because there were no bombs involved; the bomb squad were in attendance, though, and apparently some materials which could possibly have been used to make a bomb were present.

Essentially, a Chemistry student, known among his peers for making and pretty much being constantly high on his own LSD, was trying something a bit different by cooking crystal meth. I guess he'd been watching acclaimed American suspense-drama Breaking Bad. Most papers reported on this calmly enough; the Press and Journal stuck it on the front page, with a cursory mention of the fact that the police had refused to confirm that there was any trace of methamphetamine. STV ran a similar story, as did the Herald; what mention of the drug that there was was made calmly and in a reserved, sensible fashion. None of them used the word "sex", for example.

And then, the Daily Record ran with the huge headline: "BOMB SQUAD BUST STUDENT SEX DRUGS LABORATORY".

Hang on, did they just jam the word "sex" in there at random? I mean, I know sex sells and all, but it's a bit uncalled for just jimmying it into every other sentence...oh, wait. They're going to try to justify it.

Within a few pars, the story (written by one Paul O'Hare; take a bow Paul!) notes that the "deadly sex drug" is "highly addictive" - true - and "heightens sexual pleasure". Now, while that second part may be nominally true, it's not that high in the list of the effects of methamphetamine. Indeed, if you go through the Wikipedia page for just about any drug, eventually it's going to mention some mild form of arousal...cannabis, for example, apparently causes "increased sensuality and libido". So does cocaine. Both, obviously, are also sex drugs - because the only other possibility is that none of them are. And we've already established for a fact, a stone-cold, honest-to-goodness fact, that meth is a sex drug.

Or could it be that the Record latched onto the most sensationalist part of the description that they could find, and decided that crystal meth is an obscure enough drug that they can get away with essentially bullshitting the public?

I'm almost certain that Paul O'Hare knows that the description he's written up is bullshit. Even working for the Retard, he's got to be world-wise enough to know that methamphetamine isn't Viagra. It's a lot of things, a lot of extremely bad things indeed - it's a lot worse than just a sex drug. It's incredibly addictive, and it can be deadly - so the Record have advertised it as being "claimed to improve sexual performance". That's just plain irresponsible in itself.

It's good, though, to know that this is the standard we're working with, though. One possible effect out of about twenty of crystal meth having a mildly sexual connotation makes it a sex drug - well, I'm pretty sure more than one in twenty stories in the Record are sex-based. This is one of them, even. So by the same logic, that would make the Record a sex paper.

A sex paper! And they're allowed to sell this kind of violent pornography in newsagents? Really, there should be a law against it. It should be stored on the very highest of high shelves, coming with a warning of extreme content, and in no circumstances be sold to anyone under the age of 30. Let us just pray that such a depraved publication never falls into the hands of a child or anyone of an impressionable mind.
Posted by Phil at 15:23 
Labels: news, shit journalism, UK