Mothers For Justice Formal Complaint to the Guardian

Dear Editor,

On behalf of the pressure group “Mothers for Justice” I am writing to complain about the article in the Guardian on Wednesday 24 March 2010 by the journalist Rachel Williams, titled “Abuse of ‘baby-snatcher’ social workers finds an outlet online”

It is our belief that the Editor’s Code of Practice has been seriously infringed in this article. We have decided to approach the Guardian Editor as a first, and hopefully satisfactory point of redress, rather than a more formal solution.

Rachel Williams wrote about one particular and easily identifiable family from the Suffolk area, and did not allow anyone from that family put forward their side of the story. This does appear to disregard points 2 and 3i of the Editor’s Code of Practice.  She also wrote disparagingly about various blog sites, without giving any of the bloggers any opportunity of redress in the article. She did not, for example, investigate to find out why the bloggers are posting case notes onto their sites. The article was an extremely poor piece of journalism, and not what one would expect from a quality newspaper.

Although we are pleased to note that the Guardian online did offer the opportunity to reply to the article in the form of comments, we at Mothers for Justice feel that there should be an editorial comment to redress the balance, or, perhaps, a further article by someone with more experience than Rachel Williams, a properly conducted piece of investigative journalism.

We await your speedy proceeding on this matter

Yours faithfully,

Barbara Ann Richards aka Zoompad, author of “Tip” and spokesperson for Mothers For Justice