Michael Jackson’s nephew has had a press regulator complaint rejected over a Mail on Sunday article about the singer’s alleged “child porn stash”.
The Mail on Sunday reported in April that two of Jackson’s accusers wanted a cache of photos, alleged to contain nude images of his child molestation victims, unsealed by a court to expose their contents.
It said the Jackson estate was fighting to keep the files, which were seized by police in a raid on the singer’s Neverland Ranch in 2003, sealed because they claimed the men wanted to access naked photos of Jackson which are inside.
Taj Jackson, the singer’s nephew, told the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO) that the story gave the misleading impression that the Jackson estate accepted the files contained child pornography, which he disputed.
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He argued it was a “matter of public record that the allegations regarding child pornography was false, and it was an ‘inarguable matter of fact’ that any such allegations were false,” according to IPSO.
Taj Jackson also argued the newspaper had breached the Editors’ Code of Practice by not contacting the Jackson family before publication.
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But the Mail on Sunday said the allegations against Michael Jackson had been “very widely covered” for decades and “any reasonable reader would understand that he and his estate denied all allegations of wrongdoing” meaning it was unnecessary to add a further denial to the story.
The newspaper also said the claim that child pornography had been found in the singer’s home was reported as an allegation from the two men involved in the court case and not presented as fact.
It told IPSO it “took care to present these allegations as claims and to make clear the claims were currently the subject of litigation”.
And it argued that the fact the litigation was being allowed in court proved the matter was not settled as Taj Jackson had claimed, meaning reporting the allegations was not inaccurate.
IPSO’s complaints committee said it was clear from the outset of the article that the claims were being made by the two accusers and were not established as fact.
The committee also felt the article “did not suggest that the estate accepted that a file existed which contained child pornography”.
The ruling added: “The article accurately reported that the estate was arguing that this file should not be unsealed and set out its position that the application was being made for an ulterior purpose.”
Finally the complaints committee said there is no standalone requirement in the Editors’ Code for contact to be made with interested parties ahead of publication and that, as it did not consider the article contained any inaccurate information, it was not necessary to have done so in this case.
Read the full IPSO ruling here.
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