Should Christopher Jeffries Sue The Daily Mail & Other Newspapers For Deformation Of Character?

And do you think that certain elements of the press should accept that they have behaved very badly in their reporting of this case and apologise for the terrible damage that they have undoubtedly caused to this poor man’s life?

Following The Announcement that Dutch national Vincent Tabak has now been charged with the murder of Bristol landscape architect Jo Yeates, should the newspapers, and in particular the Daily Mail, who profited from filling their column inches with defamatory comments and speculation about her landlord and neighbour Christopher Jeffries, be made to pay a very high price in the hope that they will finally learn the lesson that in England a man should be regarded as innocent until proven guilty in a court of law?

From the time of the retired school master’s arrest until his release without charge, we were treated to a daily diet of ever more lurid details about this man who, in one article alone, was described as being “lewd”, weird”, “creepy”, “disturbing”, “strange”, “angry”, “odd” and “eccentric”.

We were also shown a variety of pictures which included one from almost thirty years ago in which he is apparently sporting ‘a blue rinse’ hairdo, I suppose to cement his ‘weird’ credentials, and an altogether more sinister picture, taken through the window of his car as it was being removed for forensic examination, which showed a pile of road maps for the Bristol area on the passenger seat and bore the legend, “Seized: Road maps inside the Chrysler which was taken away by police”. Presumably the inference being that these were maps that may have been used to plan where to dump a body.

Some elements of the British press seem only too willing to resort to this cheap form of sensationalised journalism, pandering to those members of the British public who are equally willing to lap it up. This type of irresponsible reporting is, however, not a new phenomenon, we saw previously with the character assassination of Colin Stagg in the Rachel Nickell murder case and the more recent victimisation of Robert Murat in connection with the disappearance of Madeleine McCann; who apparently is, due to his 'press lynching', still receiving death threats to this day, despite being cleared of any suspicion by the police.

So maybe only a punishment of catastrophic proportions will finally make these newspapers exercise a little more care in the future and rein in some of their less responsible journalists within our supposedly self regulating Free Press. What do you think?