Catching Up With Jermaine Jackson

This week I published two Jermaine Jackson interviews within two days of one another, on two different continents. The first, published in the States, marked by Huffington Post 'comeback' after 15 months away. The second was Jermaine's only UK interview promoting the Jacksons' Unity Tour concerts.

I spoke to Jermaine twice last week by phone. The first time I caught him - on Monday, January 14th - he was just about to go on live TV in France to promote his solo tour with David Serero, which was what I had called to speak about.

The second time - the following morning - I called him at his hotel for our exclusive chat about the Unity Tour. By that point he had damaged his voice. He'd seen a doctor earlier that morning and been told not to speak loudly (I'm not sure I've ever heard Jermaine speak loudly - but he was even quieter than usual). He cancelled other interviews later that day to rest his vocal chords.

The Huffington Post article, published yesterday, featured interviews with Jermaine and his collaborator, French opera singer David Serero, about their joint album and French tour. The pair are currently on the road together performing 'You Are Not Alone: The Musical'. Based on Jermaine's memoirs, he tells stories about his family's years in and out of the spotlight, showing never-before-seen photographs, a well as performing songs from the family's enviable catalogue of hits. Click here to read the article.

David Serero and Jermaine Jackson in the studio recording their new album, 'I Wish You Love'.

The second article, published in the UK today, is the first interview any of the Jacksons have given this year to promote the European leg of their Unity Tour. Jermaine spoke about his memories of London, how the show was 'healing' his brothers, what fans could expect from the concerts and what progress had been made on the group's new album.

It was published in the Yellow Advertiser newspaper series - one of the largest regional newspapers in Britain, featuring 10 different editions with a combined readership of almost half a million people in and around London. It went into half the editions this week and will go into the other half next week.

Here's how it looked on the page.  Thanks very much to Harrison Funk for supplying us with the pictures.

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If you're finding that print too difficult to read, you can read the online version by clicking here.

Black By Design

I had the chance recently to interview Pauline Black, lead singer of 80s two-tone pop group The Selecter. Pauline is appearing at a local library as part of an upcoming book festival to discuss her memoir, Black By Design. In anticipation of the interview I got hold of a copy and found it to be a fascinating window on Britain in the 1950s.

Pauline grew up as a dark-skinned, mixed-race girl in Romford at a time when it was unusual to see a black person in the area - circumstances that will be inconceivable to anyone who has only known Romford within the last few decades. Adopted by a white family, she was the only black pupil at her school.

Her book details the racist abuse she suffered, how she became politicised by the music of James Brown and the writings of Malcolm X and, quite movingly, the sexual abuse she suffered as a pre-pubescent girl - plus all the sorts of backstage exploits you'd expect from a music industry memoir.

She spoke frankly about all of these things in our interview, as well as touching on recent child abuse scandals and discussing the racial climate in Britain today - particularly in relation to the the London 2011 riots.

Here's a copy of the piece as it went into the paper.

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Award Nomination

A happy topic for my first blog of 2013.

I received a text message from my editor this afternoon - I was crossing the River Thames from Gravesend to Tilbury on a dilapidated ferry at the time (long story) - to tell me I had been nominated in the Best Newcomer category at the EDF regional press awards. Although I have worked as a freelance reporter since 2008, I only began full time work on a regional newspaper in late 2011.

I've been nominated for a trio of stories. The first was a gonzo account of my thwarted attempt to interview controversial former TV presenter Michael Barrymore. Barrymore, for those who don't know, was the king of British primetime TV in the 1990s but his career was left in tatters when a dead man was found floating in his swimming pool after a drug-fuelled party. DNA cleared Barrymore of any involvement in the man's death but the scandal was sufficient to ruin him.

I arrived at a secret location, where Barrymore was recording a guest show for a local radio station, under the impression that he had agreed to an interview. He denied ever agreeing to any such thing and seemed quite perturbed by my arrival, but allowed me to stay on the condition that I sat quietly and didn't ask him any questions. That didn't last long.

About a third of the way into the recording he began interrogating me on-air. "I'm interviewing a journalist!" he declared. His refusal to give me an interview became a running joke throughout the broadcast and his antics were perfect fodder for a first-person feature. The icing on the cake was that after our radio chatter he did give me a few exclusive nuggets for the newspaper after all.

The second piece I've been nominated for was a court story about a local man who had been caught in possession of more than 100,000 images of child sex abuse. Several hundred were considered to depict the most shocking and sadistic level of abuse. There were videos too.

Sadly, that is not a particularly uncommon story. What made this scenario unusual was that I arrived at the courthouse to discover that a magistrates court had slapped a bizarre reporting restriction on the case in a previous hearing. They had banned any publication of the man's address because he did not live alone and they said his family could suffer from vigilantism.

UK libel laws dictated that preventing the publication of the man's address amounted to a blanket ban on all reporting of the case. In a large town it is highly likely that somebody will have at least one namesake. There will be lots of John Smiths, for example. If I put in the paper that John Smith has been convicted of possessing child porn - but don't include his address - every other John Smith in town can sue me and my newspaper for defamation by claiming the report caused their neighbours to think they were the convicted pervert.

In my view, the reporting restriction was a nonsense. Firstly, making court orders to prevent vigilantism is like putting signs up in car parks reminding people that it is illegal to steal cars. People don't need to be reminded that it is wrong. Everybody knows that it is wrong. It is already regulated by existing laws.

But more importantly, I was alarmed by the potential precedent of a ruling which said that because a child porn collector did not live on his own, he should not be held publicly accountable for his crimes. What of future cases? Could all paedophiles ensure their anonymity by simply moving in with somebody?

I raised the issue with the court clerk, who in turn agreed to pass my concerns to the judge. However, the clerk forgot and the hearing concluded. Just as the judge was about to rise, I stood and addressed him. He sat back down.

The defence barrister and I swapped legal arguments and the judge deliberated. He sided with me, concluding that the restriction set a disturbing precedent. He ordered that it be lifted so I could publish details of the man's crimes. It turned out I was the first reporter at our newspaper to ever overturn a reporting restriction completely off the cuff - reporters are usually aware of them and able to plan their arguments for days before the hearing.

Three months later I stumbled across the story that would lead to my third nominated article - again at the local courthouse and again involving child abuse.  I knew that a man called Barry Snow was due in court over alleged child abuse. I didn't know that the circumstances of his offending would lead the presiding judge to publicly criticise the Jehovah's Witness church over its handling of child sex abuse cases.

Snow had repeatedly molested a girl under the age of 10 in the late 1970s, when he was in his late teens. His crimes were reported to the Jehovah's Witness church, where he was a dedicated member. Instead of reporting the abuse to police, church elders handled the matter internally. Snow went on to molest several more children.

At first I assumed that the church elders had committed a criminal offence by failing to report the abuse to police. But after a little digging I discovered that this was not the case. Counter-intuitive though it may seem, in the UK there is no statutory obligation for anybody - even a school - to report suspected child abuse. If you sign your child up to a scouts group or a football team or a nursery and they suffer abuse while they are there, they have no statutory right to have that abuse reported to the authorities.

The result was a news feature which used the Barry Snow case as a springboard to explore the ongoing but little-known campaign in the UK to introduce laws requiring schools and other children's organisations to report suspected child abuse to police. Just a few weeks after it was published, the Jimmy Savile scandal erupted and sent shockwaves around the country, bringing this very subject to the forefront of popular debate.

I haven't yet heard where or when the ceremony will be held. I have no idea what articles any of the other nominees have been shortlisted for and I certainly won't go in the expectation of winning. I didn't even think I'd be nominated. But it is an honour that I have been, and I am most grateful.

Interviewing Amy

Last week I had the opportunity to interview reality TV star Amy Childs. Amy shot to fame on ITV2 show 'The Only Way Is Essex', which has divided the people of Essex (some have adopted the show as a lifestyle template, others believe it is detrimental to the entire county's image), and divided critics.

I have only seen one episode of TOWIE and I can't say I was a fan. The cast had gone 'glamping' (glamorous camping) and my only real memory, besides the terribly stilted acting, was the enforced idiocy. Two men were shown trying to dig a toilet with bendy twigs. Nobody is that stupid. The whole thing was clearly staged. I found it infuriating.

Nonetheless, I found Amy to be a lovely woman with a keen business sense and a lot of ambition. Here's how it looked in the paper but I think the image is too small for the print to be visible, so I have pasted the story itself below.

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On Saturday Amy Childs opened her new boutique at Basildon’s Eastgate Centre. With less than 24 hours until the shutters went up, she told YA reporter Charles Thomson about her top secret new TV project and why she would never return to TOWIE.

AMY CHILDS is putting the finishing touches to her new boutique. Tomorrow she will officially open it. Fans are expected to descend on Eastgate in the hope of glimpsing the presenter, model and businesswoman who shot to fame on ITV2’s The Only Way Is Essex. Few of them probably realise that Amy has been at the Eastgate for much of the last two weeks, hidden behind the store’s shutters, personally overseeing the whole project. 

“People think I don’t do anything,” she tells me during a 15-minute break. “They see the products and the shops and they say, ‘What’s she even doing, though?’ But I work hard. I work seven days a week.”

The hard work has paid off. As TOWIE’s most successful alumnus, she is now the face of an ever-expanding business empire which, to date, includes three clothing lines, a range of false eyelashes, her own line of tanning products, a perfume, a magazine column and now plans for a national chain of shops.  

For now, the Basildon boutique is temporary – but if it proves popular it could stay. She will work part-time in the new shop, which will only sell Amy Childs products, in-between shooting dates for a lucrative new TV project she refuses to tell me anything about. 

“I’m really excited about it,” she says. “I’ve been offered so many shows but I wanted to do the right thing for me. I didn’t want to just rush into any old TV show. I can’t tell you anything, but it will be out next year.”

Amy and her fellow TOWIE stars have been the butt of comedians’ jokes since the series first aired in 2010, constantly painted as preening dimwits. 

I suggest to Amy that her burgeoning business empire throws that reputation into serious doubt. 

“It’s not true at all,” she protests. “I’ve always been business-minded. Ever since I was 13 I’ve known I wanted to own shops. I worked in a salon for two-and-a-half years before I was on TOWIE and had lots of clients who came to see me at home. I’ve always worked hard. But when I did TOWIE, doors opened for me.”

So was TOWIE a means to an end? 

“Not at all,” she says. “But I never wanted to be on the telly. I was in two minds when they asked me.”

Amy was the break out star of TOWIE’s first two seasons but departed in late 2011.

“I decided to do the show and just be myself,” she continues. “I loved every minute but nothing lasts forever. It was brilliant for me, but I needed to do this. The show got really big and I thought, ‘You’ve got to make the most of this’. I left at the right time. It’s still a great show but I’d never go back.” 

Amy’s looks and multi-faceted business model have earned comparisons to Katie Price, often cited online as Amy’s ‘idol’. She’s even represented by Price’s old manager. 

However, she laughs off the suggestion that she’s attempting to emulate the former glamour model.
“It’s so funny what the press say,” she giggles. “I said in one interview that I admired Katie and now they say she’s my idol. We are so different. I’m my own person.”

So who is her real idol? 

“Victoria Beckham,” she says, immediately. “She is brilliant. I really look up to her. She looks absolutely fantastic.” 

Amy will hit screens again before Christmas in an appearance on ‘Stephen Fry – Gadget Man’ – a move she hopes will go some way towards dispelling her airhead image. 

“He was so lovely,” she beams. “We were talking all about beauty gadgets. That’s why he came to me – I know my beauty inside-out.

“He was so interested in me. He said he was a big fan of TOWIE.”

He’s not the only one. Amy now has an army of young female admirers, including 1.2million Twitter followers. 

How does it feel, I wonder, to go from complete anonymity to such enormous adulation?

“It is weird having fans” she says. “But it’s amazing. I absolutely love them. They’re like my little family. They’re so sweet.”

Is it a burden being a role model for so many young and impressionable girls?

”I’m just myself. They look up to me but I don’t feel any responsibility because I’ve always been the same way. They love me for me.”

Gay Hairdresser Stabbing; Has copy & paste journalism turned an aggressor into a victim?

On Tuesday morning I made my way over to Basildon Crown Court, as I often do. I had been following the case of Lee Howett, a 26-year-old man from Stanford-Le-Hope in Essex, since his first appearance at Basildon Magistrates Court on Thursday, August 23rd. Howett was charged with a Section 18 'Wounding with Intent' offence. A hairdresser by trade, he had stabbed a man with a pair of scissors at Basildon rail station on June 24th. He didn't enter a plea at that Magistrates Court hearing. His case was referred to Crown because of its seriousness.

A Plea & Case Management Hearing was held once the case got to Crown Court, where Howett entered a guilty plea. On Tuesday he appeared at Basildon Crown to be sentenced for his crime.

When I arrived at court, a reporter from our rival newspaper The Echo was already in the building. We both scribbled notes throughout Howett's hearing. Howett had been waiting for a train when three intoxicated football fans had spilled onto the platform, singing and shouting. Howett shouted at them to 'shut up'.

Howett claimed one of the men responded with a homophobic comment. CCTV played in court showed that Howett then lunged at the man three times. On the last occasion, he had taken a pair of scissors from his bag. He plunged them, between one and one-and-a-half inches deep, into his victim's back. Had he hit the man's spine - and he wasn't far off - he could have been paralysed or killed. Howett was sentenced to two-and-a-half years in prison.

As my paper, the Yellow Advertiser, is a weekly title, the Echo - a daily - inevitably beat us to publication. By the time our paper hit streets, the Echo's report had already been picked up by the Daily Mail. From there it was republished by outlets from France to Florida. Europe's biggest gay news outlet Pink News ran the story. So did US websites Queerty and GayStarNews.

Many of these reports were somewhat sympathetic to Howett. Rightly so, you might think. He was a young man on a train platform who simply asked some unruly men to be quiet and was in turn abused over his sexuality. He snapped and plunged pair of scissors into his tormentor's back. It may not be the best way of dealing with the situation, but many might find it understandable.

Indeed, much of the user discussion on Pink News was supportive of Howett.

"If the 'victim' had kept his mouth shut he wouldn't have been stabbed," wrote a poster called Allex. "What goes around comes around. More of these straight thugs need to be taught a lesson."

Another user, B Ingram, wrote, "I'm not a fan of violence but I have to say, as I read more and more stories on would-be gay victims of hate crimes fighting back, I am thrilled."

Some posters felt justice was unequal for members of the LGBT community. They suggested that if Howett's victim had instead attacked Howett, his sentence would have been much more lenient. A poster called Adam wrote, "If [Howett] had been stabbed or beaten to a pulp, the men, if caught, may get a fine."

Another poster, called Another Hannah, wrote, "This is a sentence which is obviously disproportionate to the sentences given when the boot is on the other foot."

However, all of the above articles, which prompted these sympathetic responses, omit what I consider to be a vital piece of information. Here's a copy of my report in the Yellow Advertiser. See if you can spot what was left out of everybody else's stories.

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Lee Howett already had another conviction for possessing a bladed article in a public place. That conviction was for using a pair of scissors in a threatening manner. He had been found guilty of brandishing the scissors in a supermarket in Grays. He did so when confronted by staff who had caught him stealing alcohol. He was handed an 18-month community order for the crime. He had various other prior convictions too, including more than one count of assaulting a police officer.

Moreover, no evidence was presented to suggest that Howett had actually been the victim of homophobic abuse. It was always Howett's contention, but it was never proved. During Howett's Plea and Case Management Hearing there was talk of holding a Newton Hearing - a trial of issue - to hear evidence on the point and have the judge make a decision as to whether he felt Howett's claim was true. Judge Owen-Jones decided not to hold the hearing. On Tuesday, he said he was prepared to give Howett 'the benefit of the doubt'. In his summing up, he said Howett had 'probably' been the subject of a homophobic remark.

That's not quite how many of the outlets who ran the story presented it, though. The Daily Mail's intro read, "A gay hairdresser has been jailed for two and a half years after he stabbed a man with a pair of scissors in revenge for making a homophobic comment. Lee Howett snapped after a passenger waiting at Basildon rail station, Essex, abused him over his sexuality during a series of skirmishes."

It is not a matter of fact that Lee Howett was the subject of a homophobic comment. Moreover, the phrase 'abused him over his sexuality during a series of skirmishes' suggests a flurry of homophobic insults, whereas Howett alleged only one, and that one was alleged to have happened before the physical skirmishes - which Howett started - not during.

The inclusion of the alleged homophobic slur as fact, coupled with the omission of Howett's prior convictions and the use of the word 'snapped', paint a picture of an innocent bystander provoked into an uncharacteristically violent act by an extreme set of circumstances. The evidence does not fit that picture. The evidence suggests Howett's behaviour was entirely characteristic. He had prior convictions for violence and a prior conviction involving a bladed article.  The evidence also does not suggest any extreme circumstances. Being called a single homophobic name is not pleasant, by any stretch of the imagination. But nor is it sufficiently unusual to be held up as an excuse for a stabbing.

The Echo report which sparked the global coverage did not mention Howett's prior convictions. I won't criticise the Echo for that. Facts get left out of court stories, by necessity, all the time. To put everything that is said during a hearing like Howett's into a newspaper would be impractical. It would fill half the paper and nobody would read it. The job of the court reporter is to present the salient information to the reader without misleading them or giving undue weight to either party.

The Echo may have felt the information wasn't especially important. That is a perfectly valid opinion. All journalism is subjective. I have often quoted Carl Bernstein on the subject. Mr Bernstein once said that the very act of journalism is subjective, because reporters and editors decide what is or is not news. Unless everything that happens in the world on any given day - every flick of a light switch - is reported, then somebody, somewhere has made a decision as to what is or is not news.

But I found it interesting how the dynamics of the story were so drastically changed by that simple omission. Coincidentally, when I brought the story back to the newsroom on Tuesday morning, a senior staff member said it was a shame about the prior convictions because without them, it could be a great story about a put-upon gay man who, after years of taunts, snapped and attacked one of his bullies. Of course, we could have taken a decision to omit the prior convictions and write that story - but that wasn't an option we even considered.

After watching the story go around the world in the form that it did, it would have been easy to kick ourselves for not simply omitting the prior bladed article conviction and turning the Howett case into the story we wished it had been. The money we could have made! But we had a discussion on Friday and concluded fairly quickly that we had done the right thing.

Back To School

Last month I received two letters in the post at work from children at a local primary school. They were studying 'how the media affects our lives' and they wanted a real-life journalist to come in and give a talk. Ordinarily I would have politely declined, as I am no fan of public speaking, but my colleague Suzi talked me into it.

So last week the pair of us went to the school and spent an hour being grilled by 60 kids, all aged 10 and 11. Their teachers hadn't told them in advance that we were coming in and when they discovered who we were, I was susprised to hear them all gasp. It was a big deal to them, which just made me even more nervous.

Lots of hands in the air, waiting to ask questions.

Thankfully, Suzi was brilliant. Having had some teacher training, she was able to talk to the kids on a level they could understand, adopting a sort of animated persona and keeping them giggling. They were a little too young to grasp a lot of what our job entails - trying to explain government corruption to a 10-year-old is a losing battle, and the content of a lot of the court and crime stories we cover would be entirely inappropriate for their age group.

 Suzi and I answering questions.

However, they were very entertained to hear that I had just interviewed a man who was about to chain himself to a tree to stop the local council from chopping it down, and they loved hearing about the time Suzi had lunch with Prince Charles. They asked, bizarrely, if either of us had met James Bond and were most excited to hear that I had once got Daniel Craig's autograph (nothing to do with work, though!).

We got some lovely 'thank you' letters in the post a few days later. One of them said, "Throughout the amazing hour you were here we have learnt much more about the media than we expected to know by the end of this topic. We had lots of fun and are now inspired to become journalists like you."

Pictures supplied by Laura Dance.

It was nice to see that the kids were so excited to have us there and to know that they enjoyed the experience. Maybe I'll be less hesitant when the next letter comes in.

Another Tom Mesereau Endorsement!

Randall Sullivan's new Michael Jackson biography is causing a lot of controversy. It's not hard to see why. Last weekend I spotted a feature in the Mail on Sunday, taken from Sullivan's book. It included an allegation that Jackson's years of plastic surgery had left him with no nose and he had to wear a prosthesis. The story said Jackson kept a jar of fake noses and a tube of glue beside his bed.

The story is absurd, of course. Jackson's full autopsy report leaked after his death. Autopsy reports contain anything and everything about a body which is considered to be unusual. Jackson's mentioned scars behind his ears caused by his plastic surgery. It mentioned black tattooing on his head to disguise his baldness. It mentioned his dental work. What it didn't mention, though, was anything about Jackson not having a nose or anything about him wearing a prosthesis. Ergo, story is demonstrably false.

I haven't read Randall Sullivan's book yet so I won't comment on it as a whole, but the Mail on Sunday article was a travesty of journalism. At first I found it disappointing, but when I realised that it was not only Sullivan who had let the prosthetic nose nonsense into print but also his publishers', their legal team and subsequently the Mail on Sunday's editorial and legal staff, I thought it stopped being disappointing and started being sinister.

There is no way the story could go through to many legal checks without somebody realising it was deranged. It was clearly sent to print in the knowledge that it was false. And if it wasn't, every staff member who checked it before it went to print should be sacked with immediate effect because they are incompetent. On the other hand, if they sent it to print in the knowledge it was false then they should still be sacked. Either way, they are unfit to do their jobs.

Anyway, I digress. I got an email the other day to tell me that I am repeatedly referenced in Randall Sullivan's book. In his acknowledgements section he describes my Huffington Post articles about Michael Jackson as 'excellent' and I am told he references them several times.

Even more excitingly, Mr Sullivan writes in the acknowledgements that he was introduced to my work by none other than Thomas Mesereau, the magnificent civil rights attorney who secured Jackson's acquittal in his 2005 trial.

 Thomas Mesereau endorses my work to Randall Sullivan.

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I met Mr Mesereau and his co-counsel Susan Yu at the London premiere of David Gest's Michael Jackson documentary 'Life of an Icon' last year. They were both very complimentary about my work. I had appeared on the radio with Mr Mesereau a few weeks earlier where he had also praised my work. However, I was unsure if he was just being polite. He seems like a very nice man.

To learn that Mr Mesereau privately refers people to my work when they ask him questions about the Michael Jackson trial is extremely humbling. I was a journalism student when Jackson's trial was going on. I remember following it every day - reading the transcripts and the media coverage. I remember watching the verdicts live on BBC News with my mother and my brother. I could never have even conceived at that time that one day Tom Mesereau would be pointing to me as an authority on the trial he worked so hard to win.

So anyway, a big thank you to Tom Mesereau - a hero not only for his valiant work in 2005 but for his catalogue of pro bono work in the Deep South. He is a conscientious and valiant man who excels in his profession. As Mr Sullivan writes in his acknowledgements - Mr Mesereau is just about the only prominent figure in Jackson's life who has escaped significant criticism from his fans. It is an honour to have his endorsement.

 Thomas Mesereau and Susan Yu at the London premiere of 'Life of an Icon'. Picture by Angela Kande.
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