Retired Brighton-based journalist Greg Hadfield will go to trial over drawing attention to an obscene X message posted by the account of former Labour MP Ivor Caplin.
Hadfield applied for the court proceedings to be halted and was notified on 15 September this had been denied and the case would be going to trial at Brighton Magistrates’ Court on 17-18 November.
The former news editor of The Sunday Times and founder of Brighton and Hove Independent is facing a charge of an offence “sending by public communication network offensive/indecent/obscene/menacing message/matter” under Section 127 of the Communications Act 2003.
[Read more: Journalist Greg Hadfield faces charge after sharing Ivor Caplin post]
Hadfield published a screengrab on X on 25 June 2024, which showed the (since-deleted) X account under the name of former Hove MP Ivor Caplin had engaged with explicit content.
Hadfield said in his message that he was sure a named Labour Party colleague of Caplin “has known about @ivorcaplin’s ‘likes’ – and likes – for a very long time. Why didn’t she say something?”
Depending on an X user’s account settings, they would have seen an obscured version of the screengrab with an adult content warning requiring them to then open the image if they wanted to see it.
Hadfield was visited at home by police officers and interviewed under caution in September 2024.
He was offered the chance to accept a caution, which he declined as he was concerned it would lead to unfair stigma being attached to him through headlines like “award-winning journalist charged [with] online gay porn”.
‘Abuse of process’ application denied
Hadfield filed an application that the proceedings were an abuse of process.
However Senior District Judge Goldspring, Chief Magistrate for England and Wales, ruled this week that the case could go ahead because the Crown Prosecution Service had made a “not unreasonable” decision to prosecute by correctly balancing the public interest factors.
Whether or not the Article 10 right to freedom of expression applies is for a trial court to decide, he added.
Judge Goldspring said: “The authorities make clear that only where the decision is so egregious so as to amount to an affront to justice itself should the court interfere, I do not consider the facts here to come close to crossing that barrier, it does not amount to an affront to justice, the decision was reasonable and is not an abuse, the evidential issues and / or the Article 10 ECHR protections are trial issues, the case is not one of those rare cases where the decision amounts to affront to justice and the trial process is more than equipped to deal with evidential weaknesses the defence claim exist.”
Hadfield is now launching a crowdfunder to cover the “tens of thousands” he has committed to the case and “mitigate” the costs.
Hadfield told Press Gazette he was “glad” the case is going to trial as there is a “really important issue here… a journalist in the public interest publishing”.
Hadfield highlighted another case of a journalist being interviewed by police over posts on X: Rebecca Tidy-Harris wrote in the Daily Mail this week that she was investigated for harassment over posts relating to a former police officer who had been charged with stalking and harassment.
Last year, The Telegraph suggested police were overreaching their powers when they questioned journalist Allison Pearson on suspicion of breaching the Public Order Act over a post on X. However a review found that Essex Police had been right to investigate the complaint.
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