Monday 1 December 2008

Is the media concentrating on Damian Green arrest and ignoring Sally Murrer?

Good letter in The Guardian today ludicrous case against journalist from Stephen Jackobi. It contrasts the news coverage and treatment by the police of shadow Home Office minister Damian Green and Milton Keynes Citizen journalist Sally Murrer, who had charges involving leaked information from police sources thrown out by a judge last week, after an 19 month ordeal.
Jackobi writes: "It is clearly more newsworthy to be a politician than a journalist, but while Damian Green had over two pages, a leader and several letters devoted to him (November 29), Sally Murrer had to make do with a passing mention in the leader: 'Yesterday a case collapsed involving a local journalist'. Sally Murrer was that journalist. A 50-year-old single mother bringing up three children, one of them autistic, she was disgracefully treated. She was arrested three times. On one occasion she was strip-searched and held for 36 hours in police cells. During interviews she was threatened with life imprisonment, and became so traumatised she made arrangements for her autistic child on the basis that she was going to prison."
The Sun's Trevor Kavanagh describes Sally Murrer's treatment by police as "inexcusable" in a typically hard-hitting column today, claiming it was a £1million vendetta after the journalist had revealed "officers had lost the keys to the local nick".

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