Complaint
The ECU received a number of complaints about these articles, making one or more of the following points, which the ECU considered in the light of the ’s editorial standards of impartiality and accuracy.
- the items exhibited anti-male bias, by representing only or predominantly the views of women, and by considering particular cases which had come before the family courts only from the mother’s viewpoint;
- the items dealt with the concept of parental alienation in a way which gave a misleading impression;
- the first item was inaccurate in the way it reflected the academic research it was based on.
Outcome
The ECU found as follows:
1: Anti-male bias
Though the articles addressed controversial topics, the ECU did not consider the issues of controversy were such as to require balanced representation of women’s and men’s viewpoints. Insofar as they concerned individual cases which had been before the family courts, the articles did not identify the parties, so any controversy over the rights and wrongs of particular cases was not engaged. Equally, as the items offered no general conclusions about the respective roles and responsibilities of mothers and fathers in such cases, there was no occasion for the views of fathers to be represented. The concept of parental alienation, dealt with in both articles, has been the subject of controversy as to its validity and its utility in family court proceedings, but the nature of the controversy is such that the distinction between the viewpoints of fathers and mothers is immaterial; even if (as reported in the articles) parental alienation is predominantly alleged by fathers against mothers, the arguments for and against its validity or utility would be the same irrespective of which party alleged it. This point of complaint was not upheld.
2: Parental alienation
Both items explained that the term parental alienation had first been coined as “parental alienation syndrome” by “the controversial US psychiatrist Richard Gardner” and, reframed as “parental alienation”, had been extensively used in family court proceedings in this country. Both reported concerns on the part of experts that its deployment had been adverse to the interests of children and suggestions that the term should no longer be used. Both referred to new draft guidelines on dealing with allegations of alienating behaviour put out for consultation by the Family Justice Council which acknowledged that parental alienation was a “vexed and highly emotive concept”. The ECU’s investigations led it to conclude that the substance of what the articles said about parental alienation was well-founded. Nevertheless it considered the overall effect to be somewhat misleading because neither article distinguished clearly enough between parental alienation as a “sԻdz”, susceptible of diagnosis by those claiming relevant expertise, and what the general reader might take the term to mean, namely behaviour by one parent calculated to alienate a child from its other parent. As a result, they were in danger of giving the impression that criticisms of the concept of parental alienation applied to any allegation of alienating behaviours by one parent against another. This point of complaint was upheld on grounds of accuracy.
3: Reflection of the research
The first item began by citing a recent study which found that dozens of children had been “forced into contact with fathers accused of abuse” and went on to say “In all cases, fathers had used a disputed concept in court known as ‘parental alienation’” and “All the fathers in the England-wide study, carried out by the University of Manchester and reported by the , had responded in court to abuse allegations with the parental alienation concept - in which they claimed the mothers had turned the child against them without good reason”. The point the ECU was asked to consider was whether it was accurate to say that all the fathers in the study had в” parental alienation in court or “responded in court…with the parental alienation concept”. According to the account published by Manchester University[1] “39 of the women accusing their former partners of abuse were counter accused of a spurious legal argument called parental alienation (PA)…The remaining six women who were not accused said they were either threatened with PA or mischaracterised as medically or psychologically abnormal”. It therefore appears that, out of a sample of 45 women, six were not “aܲ” of parental alienation in court, though some of them (possibly as many as five) were “threatened with it”, and that the article was not strictly accurate in its use of “a”. However, the ’s Editorial Guidelines do not call for strict accuracy in every circumstance, but for “dܱ” accuracy, meaning that the accuracy must be adequate and appropriate to the output concerned. The test normally applied by the ECU is whether the inaccuracy is such as to affect the reader’s understanding of the issues under discussion, and in this instance the ECU regarded the departure from strict accuracy as too marginal to affect readers’ understanding of the issues. This point of complaint was not upheld.
Overall the complaint was partly upheld.
Partly upheld
[1] Available at
Further action
The finding was reported to the Board of News and discussed with the editorial team responsible.