Try not to laugh too hard. The Leveson-compliant press regulator Impress has made its first adjudication, ruling against Byline Media, one of its most vocal defenders. Byline, the conspiracy theory site with tinfoil mad-hatter Peter Jukes as CEO, was found guilty of defaming tabloid journalist Dennis Rice and ordered to pay him £2,500 in damages. The irony is just too delicious. Byline signed up to Impress as part of its campaign against the tabloid press. Now Impress has ruled against them and forced them to write a £2,500 cheque to one of their main critics.

“Dennis Rice, the claimant, contacted IMPRESS to make a request for arbitration to settle a legal claim of defamation, harassment and malicious falsehood, arising from two tweets sent out from the Byline Media Twitter account on 6th March 2017. On 7th April, the Chartered Institute of Arbitrators appointed Clive Thorne as independent arbitrator for the case. In the award, Mr Thorne upheld the claim in part. He found one of the two tweets to be defamatory and ordered that damages of £2,500 be awarded to Mr Rice.”

Byline – which campaigns for higher media standards – has been officially found to publish fake news…

Press regulator IPSO has slammed claims made by Peter Jukes, Twitter’s self-appointed upholder of press accuracy, finding they breached Clause 1 of the Code of Practice: Accuracy. An extract from his book “Beyond Contempt” published in the Press Gazette alleged that in June 2014, journalist Dennis Rice had “threatened to investigate” Jukes over a donation from Hacked Off. Jukes claimed Rice tweeted: “I’m now going to blog about [Jukes] & his family”. In fact, Rice’s tweet had been sent on 31 January 2014, six months earlier, in response to comments posted by Jukes which had referred to the Rice’s family. As today’s IPSO statement says: “The article therefore contained the misleading impression that the complainant had mounted an unprovoked attack on the journalist and his family.”

IPSO’s findings are highly critical:

• additional steps should have been taken to ensure the accuracy of the claim
• the journalist [Jukes] was relying on second-hand information from a highly flexible medium in which misunderstandings can occur
• the complainant should have been contacted to check the claims, or other steps should have been taken to verify the nature and timing of the tweet
• The failure to do so breached Clause 1 (i) [The press must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information]

Press Gazette has now apologised for publishing the Jukes extract. Rice tells MediaGuido in a statement:

“This is a judgement which underlines the importance of journalists checking facts – even ones who are sponsored by Hacked Off. Peter Jukes deserves credit for his crowd funding initiative, but no credit for his inability to check the date of a simple tweet.”

Jukes says:

“the letter from IPSO I have says it specifically doesn’t refer to my journalism by PG editorial process [sic]”

Perhaps it is worth re-reading this tweet of his from last June:

I admire Fleet St journalists for holding power to account: but not so much today on their own accuracy, or accountability

— Peter Jukes (@peterjukes) June 26, 2014

Indeed.