JERSEY EVENING POST -THE ONE EYED PAPER

     

TOP SECRET

Not for Publication. Any breach of this will be dealt with severely under Jersey’s DATA PROTECTION LAW.

Dear Andy Sibcy, Editor Designate of the Jersey Evening Post,

CHRIS BRIGHT & ANDY SIBCY

         On 31 October I sent an email to your Editor Chris Bright asking various questions about my son Simon Abbott who died in Jersey last June aged 47. (See my posts DID CYBER-BULLIES KILL SIMON ABBOTT? DEFENDING MURRAY NORTON by Tony Bellows; BBC'S DILEMMA - DEFINING CYBER-BULLYING etc)

My questions were of such an inflammable nature and so dangerous to the safety of the States of Jersey that Bright felt he could not answer me by email as that was far too risky.  So, through his PA Corinne Wiseman, he asked for my address so that he could post me a letter.

It didn’t seem to occur to him that if that was intercepted my cover as an MI 5 operative would have been completely blown and everyone would know where I lived.

Anyway I took the risk and then you replied on his behalf in a letter dated 8 November. But I can tell you I have doubled the number of day and night armed guards around my home.

As you know this is what I said with your answers in orange and my additional comments in brackets.

Correct me if I’m wrong but I gather you are the Editor of the JEP and as such could you help me. As you no doubt know my son Simon Abbott was extensively cyber-bullied by Murray Norton, Ian le Sueur and others over a period of about two years. The result was that he instituted a libel action against these two and six other people in Jersey’s Royal Court. Even the greenest cub reporter would recognise that this is a crackerjack story, especially on a small island like Jersey. So can you tell me why your paper never so much as mentioned a word of this?

You state as a matter of fact that your son was ‘extensively cyber-bullied’ by Murray Norton. I cannot agree with your cut-and-dried assessment. It is true that serious allegations have been made about the behaviour of Mr Norton, but these remain unsubstantiated. I am informed by the States of Jersey Police that there is currently no police investigation into those allegations.

MAIL ON SUNDAY ARTICLE

We were not aware of accusations of cyber-bullying until the article in the Mail on Sunday. (That just shows how blind your paper is to very newsworthy events that happen under your nose in Jersey. The cyber-bullying of my son had been going on for about two years before the Mail article appeared on 13 October 2013. And any decent paper would have fired all its reporters if none of them had heard about this, especially on a small island of only 100 000 people. This is so improbably that one can only assume that you had a more dubious reason for keeping this out of your paper)

You go on to say: Had your son’s libel action against Mr Norton and others got to court, the Jersey Evening Post would have reported those proceedings. (That’s either a lie or a case of your news team once again being so incompetent that it is unaware of what’s happening on your island)

At the time when Simon began his civil action the Royal Court did not release papers relating to such proceedings to the media. In any event they would not have become privileged documents until the other parties had filed a response with the court. (I suppose it would come as great surprise to you to hear that this was done towards the end of last year making the entire case available for any paper to report on. Living in South Africa half a world away from Jersey I was able to get copies of all the documents after my son died, yet your paper was unaware that they were even available for publication. On any decent paper, that doesn’t have a very dubious hidden agenda; the editor could be fired for that)

Even in the last few days when your paper carried reports about moves to outlaw cyber-bullying your paper reported that my son’s inquest was still to be held but you did not mention his name or anything about the background to his case. Why was that? But you did carry a story about some American girl who committed suicide because of cyber-bullying, hardly something that was relevant to Jersey. Standing Orders of the Island’s Parliament forbid the naming of people in the Chamber in situations like this. In this case we felt it was responsible to follow that protocol. (Come off it. That was just another excuse for you not to mention my son’s name or the circumstances surrounding what had happened to him. From what you say the Standing Orders do not control what newspapers say)

On 30 October Norton announce on his Jersey Radio show that this was his “last day for the foreseeable future.” Has you paper carried a report on this?

Norton’s contractual arrangements with the BBC are of no great news interest to us. (In this one sentence you have revealed exactly why you never reported on people who were cyber-bullying Simon – it was to protect Norton and his friends)

I now understand completely why some people in Jersey call your paper the JERSEY EVENING PROPAGANDA or is it the JERSEY EVENING PRAVDA?

Regards Jon, a disgusted former journalist, father and Poor Man's Press Ombudsman.