[Leveson] Paul McMullan & Honesty vs. Accuracy

Relevant sessions:

• November 29 2011 [TXT] [PDF] [video]

A lot's been said about Paul McMullan's appearance at the Leveson inquiry, I only want to look at one aspect here.

This is about some of the darkest, most depressing parts of McMullan's testimony.

PAUL MCMULLAN: (...) in a bizarre way, I felt slightly proud that I'd written something that created a riot and got a paediatrician beaten up, or whatever was the case, due to the "paedo" aspect of what our readers latched onto. (...) I suppose I'm being a bit frivolous, but in a sense, how do you judge what you do in your career? You like to have an impact and that was one story that certainly had an impact. I mean, you yourself wouldn't like to spend your career in a back room, never having, you know, created or achieved anything, and that was -- the achievement was not having a paediatrician beaten up, clearly, but it was writing a story of such an impact that there were riots because the public were so furious about the way the law was and it needed to be changed.

Okay, so he said "or whatever was the case". But the fact is, while a paediatrician was persecuted in 2000 after a News of the World campaign, she wasn't beaten up - what happened was that she had "PAEDO" spraypainted on her door.

This is going to take an even darker turn now: the vulnerable women who McMullan feels some responsibility for their death.

PAUL MCMULLAN: I remember interviewing, also, Lena Zavaroni after she was caught stealing a 50p bag of sweets and then I interviewed her again and then she killed herself, I think, as well, and Jennifer Elliott went on to overdose after an article that absolutely humiliated her and it was unnecessary and I really regret it because I got to know her fairly well and I quite liked her and she was in a very vulnerable position.

Again, he says "I think", but Lena Zavaroni died of pneumonia from a chest infection following surgery. It was psychosurgery intended to help her depression, and she had threatened to kill herself, so anything that exacerbated her depression was arguably a factor in the whole situation. But still - the cause of her death was pneumonia.

The cause of Jennifer Elliott's death was not an overdose. She hanged herself. (Even though McMullan does not say she did not survive the overdose, I'm certain that's how almost anyone would read it in this context.)


Paul McMullan seems to be strikingly honest, in that he's prepared to own up to the worst things he's been involved in. But don't confuse honesty with accuracy.