The Press Association has insisted that it acted in good faith despite making an undisclosed payment to a news agency accusing it of ‘lifting’and redistributing an exclusive interview with the father of murdered Bristol architect Joanna Yeates.
Earlier today the Solent News and Photo Agency accused PA of ‘blithely’copying and pasting its interview with David Yeates and sending it on to other media outlets. It also revealed that PA had agreed to pay an undisclosed sum to Solent to settle the claim and agreed to pay its legal costs.
The dispute relates to a 28 December interview which was distributed by Solent to ‘selected publications’but later appeared on other news outlets ‘word for word”. It was later discovered that the copy had been distributed by PA.
PA editor Jonathan Grun has described a joint statement released by Solent and the National Association of Press Agencies (NAPA), which supported the news agency in its legal fight, as a ‘colourful press release’- adding that PA does not recognise their ‘interpretation of the matter”.
‘The quotes from Jo Yeates’s family were in the public domain on a newspaper website and were clearly attributed in our story,” insisted Grun.
‘When Solent’s copyright in the quotes was asserted we reached a mutually satisfactory settlement. We believe that we acted in good faith on a sensitive story involving the parents of a murder victim.”
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