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.

Click to enlarge

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.

Daily Mail previously rapped for Jackson 'paedophile' comments

On Friday evening I wrote of an article which appeared overnight on the Daily Mail's website calling Michael Jackson a 'common paedophile'.

The article appeared the following day in the print edition of the newspaper and contained baseless allegations that the star had seduced and molested a string of young boys.

A Press Complaints Commission webpage shows that the newspaper, which famously supported the nazi party, has previously been lambasted by the PCC for printing exactly the same allegations.

The PCC ruling states that the Daily Mail referred to Jackson as a self-centred paedophile.

According to the ruling, the newspaper was forced to 'both remove the article from its website and annotate its archive accordingly.'

Seemingly the newspaper has not learned from its mistakes.

Elsewhere, a 1996 article reveals how David Jones, author of the latest Jackson hit piece, was actively involved in a Daily Mail plot to smear a writer at the Independent for disagreeing with the newspaper's political views.

Polly Toynbee tells how the Daily Mail attempted to label her a 'marriage-breaker' simply because she began dating a separated man.

She writes:

"First hint that something was up: people start getting calls from a David Jones of the Daily Mail, digging for dirt. Colleagues in this office get calls. Mr Jones is ferreting away among friends, collecting quotes. The story he seems to be creating is the age-old saga of idyls destroyed by scarlet Jezebels. Mr Jones is throwing around words about me like 'marriage-breaker'.

"I am puzzled. I try to imagine how they can turn this everyday concatenation of domestic circumstance into A Story.

"...Suddenly I find it frightening. Neighbours are getting calls - some of them people I have never met. On Tuesday a man came over from No. 6, deeply worried by a call from the Mail asking detailed questions about what hours he had observed any men coming and going at my house. He suspected it was a burglar casing the joint. My 11-year-old son was terrified, but even more so when the house actually was broken into that day, for the first time in years. A coincidence, I am sure."

Scared by the way she was being pursued, Toynbee contacted a friend at the Mail. Subsequently, Jones claimed that he did not like the story but had been told to work on it by a senior reporter. Toynbee responded: "Unhappy bunny or gleeful weasel, my heart does not go out to Mr Jones or his employers."

Controversial newspaper labels Jackson a 'common paedophile'

The Daily Mail today ran an article about Evan Chandler's suicide even more ludicrous than The Mirror's offering on Thursday.

The newspaper, which famously supported the nazi party and recently came under fire for publishing a homophobic article about the death of Stephen Gately, labelled Jackson a 'common paedophile' and explicitly stated that he routinely molested young boys.

The article is factually inaccurate on every level. It claims that Jackson was found in possession of child porn - he was not. Had he been, he would have been charged with possession of child porn. Bit of a no-brainer.

It also claims that Gavin Arvizzo accused Jackson of having sex with him. A blatant fabrication.

Author of the piece David Jones pours scorn on what he portrays as conspiracy theories that the 1993 allegations were concocted by Evan Chandler for financial gain. He conveniently neglects to mention numerous pieces of factual information which prove this to be the case. He neglects to mention, for instance, that it was Evan who accused Jackson of molestation while his son maintained that he'd never been touched. He neglects to mention also that journalist Mary Fischer proved in a 1994 article how Jordan had only corroborated the story after Evan plied him with a mind-altering drug, sodium amytal, which is known to induce false memory syndrome.

But Mary Fischer is a real journalist, while David Jones simply writes obscene and factually inaccurate hit-pieces for Britain's most racist newspaper.

Like so many others, Jones points to the 1994 settlement as proof of Jackson's guilt, neglecting to mention that Jackson didn't pay the settlement - his insurance carrier did - and court documents show that Jackson didn't even agree to the settlement, which was "negotiated and paid... over the protests of Mr Jackson and his personal legal counsel."

To point out each individual inaccuracy contained within the article would probably take the best part of 5000 words. Composed largely of pure fantasy and hinging much of its information on the word of Evan Chandler's brother, the clearly biased Ray Chandler (who himself profited hugely from the fabricated claims of abuse by publishing an inadvertantly hilarious book about the 1993 scandal), the article trumps even Tanya Gold's recent Guardian editorial on the nonsense scale.

A blatant hit-piece, the article is almost certainly racially motivated and I wouldn't be at all surprised if the newspaper finds itself on the receiving end of a major lawsuit within a week. David Jones is relentlessly bilious throughout the article, which contains no hint of objectivity or journalistic integrity.

Jones repeatedly quotes US reporter Diane Dimond as some manner of expert on the case, despite the fact that she is clearly unhinged. Having repeatedly stated throughout the ninties and the early noughties that her sole ambition in life was to destroy the career of Michael Jackson, she has been described by writer Ishmael Reed as a 'Jackson stalker'. Her reporting on Jackson's trial was so biased that she was fired from CourtTV almost immediately after the verdict was announced. She has made her living slandering Jackson ever since.

Dimond subsequently penned a book about Jackson titled 'Be Careful Who You Love', which Jones inexplicably describes as 'acclaimed'. Acclaimed by who? It bombed spectacularly upon its release.

Jones has employed much the same technique as Jacques Peretti did for his 2007 documentary 'Michael Jackson: What Really Happened'. He has intentionally tracked down only interviewees who he knows have financial motives for portraying Jackson as a paedophile. He has then quoted them as objective experts.

He omits vital information which exonerates Jackson of the 1993 allegations, all the while including mountains of pure speculation, which he represents as fact. He attributes quotes to Jordan Chandler which he cannot possibly verify and even goes so far as to describe the boy's thoughts.

What he neglects to mention is that rather than being 'traumatised', as Jones claims without source in his article, Jordan Chandler reverted in later life to his original stance, which was that Jackson had never touched him. When asked to take the stand in Jackson's 2005 trial - during which Jones seems to forget that Jackson was unanimously aquitted and vindicated - Jordan refused to testify against his former friend. Meanwhile, Jackson's defence had numerous witnesses lined up who were prepared to testify that in recent years Jordan had repeatedly insisted that Jackson never touched him and his father had concocted the entire story.

A vindictive character assassination, David Jones's article is the single most irresponsible piece of journalism I have ever had the misfortune to read. He should be ashamed of himself. But somehow, I suspect that he isn't.