Press regulator rejects Reform MS’s complaint against Nation.Cymru
Emily Price
The press regulator has thrown out a complaint against Nation.Cymru from a Reform Senedd Member who claimed our reporting was inaccurate.
Caerdydd Ffynnon Taf MS Cai Parry-Jones referred an article published by Nation.Cymru in May to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO), alleging that it breached the accuracy requirements of Clause 1 of the Editors’ Code.
The report was headlined, ‘Reform MS faces backlash over autism-friendly signage comments‘.
The story reported how Reform’s shadow minister for finance had been accused of mocking neurodivergent people after sharing an image online of an autism-friendly notice displayed in the Senedd’s toilets.
Warnings were added to the Welsh parliament’s toilet hand driers several years prior because they were considered to be louder than standard models.
Mr Parry-Jones was sharply criticised for mocking the signs, with critics suggesting he needed diversity training.
When we approached the former Cambridge University student for comment, he responded by doubling down on his remarks, saying “labelling things unnecessarily is a waste of taxpayers’ money.”
He also suggested that he himself may be autistic.
When we asked Mr Parry-Jones whether he had considered using his new public platform to support autistic people, he responded by threatening legal action.
He said: “As I have clearly stated in my previous email, I am not ‘ridiculing’ people with autism, as you have accused.
“Furthermore, I take my reputation seriously, and an allegation of this kind is something on which I would take advice and reserve all my rights, including any legal remedies available to me.”
Legal action
Following the publication of our story, Mr Parry-Jones wrote to IPSO and claimed our article breached press accuracy rules when we reported how he had threatened legal action.
However, IPSO pointed out to the Reform MS that in his email to Nation.Cymru sent on 19 May he had said: “I would take advice and reserve all my rights, including any legal remedies available to me”.
The press regulator said that it didn’t consider it inaccurate to report that Mr Parry-Jones had threatened legal action, adding that in any event, Nation.Cymru had set out the Reform MS’s position in full, including his response to our questions.
For these reasons, the regulator said it “did not consider the article to be significantly inaccurate and did not identify sufficient grounds to investigate a possible breach of Clause 1”.
Mr Parry-Jones was given the opportunity to appeal the decision but chose not to do so.
Impartial
The Reform Senedd Member previously published a research paper which he said demonstrated that Nation.Cymru’s reporting was “biased”.
However, critics argued that a politician investigating a news outlet that regularly scrutinises his own party could not be regarded as an independent or impartial assessor of its journalism.
In recent days Reform in the Senedd has strengthened its calls for Nation.Cymru to be defunded.
During questions to the culture minister last week, Gŵyr Abertawe MS Francesca O’Brien accused our reporters of routinely launching “partisan attacks through misleading reporting.”
Nation.Cymru was instrumental in exposing Ms O’Brien’s links to the far-right in Swansea and her jump from the Tories to Nigel Farage’s party ahead of the May 7 Senedd election.
We were the first outlet to reveal the racist text message sent by Reform MS Laura Anne Jones, which led to an investigation and subsequent 14-day suspension from the Senedd.
More recently, Nation.Cymru was the first news outlet to publish an image showing Reform Senedd election candidate Corey Edwards performing a Nazi salute.
We later revealed that after bowing out of the election race, Mr Edwards was given a job as a special advisor to Reform’s Welsh leader Dan Thomas.
The Books Council of Wales provides a periodicals grant which contributes towards our arts and culture coverage.
If Nation.Cymru were to lose this grant, it would make no difference to our news writing operation and our scrutiny of Welsh politicians would continue unchanged.
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What a knob!
But they want RT news back on the Senedd systems. Sorry, GB news.
Any criticism Reform wants to stop. Heaven help us if they gain any national power anywhere – we’d be no better than Putin’s Russia or Jinping’s China.
Trump has cowed the news in the US. The ones with any independence left are scared to call out the facts.
Reform will do the same here.
This guy is embarassingly shallow : what a pity we cannot invoke a recall process to eradicate incompetents like this. In every other job he has held (look at his Linkedin profile), he has been swiftly sacked.
It’s called ‘failing up’. Bozo was the most infamous for it.
Mwy o daflu allan na methu ifynu.
Freedom of speech champions sure are quick to threaten to get the lawyers involved when someone says something they don’t like.
They don’t like it up ’em.
But… but…. you can’t use your free speech to hold politicians accountable or there will be chaos!
What’s Harry Potter whinging about now? Any chance he could something productive ? Thought not.
There are plenty of things about him that you can actually criticise – taking the p**s out of him because he wears glasses is absolute playground behaviour from 50 years ago! Do better!
These guys really do have some sort of very strange fixation about humiliating themselves.
It’s literally been every single action they do that just turns into a complete embarrassment.
Reform have just two operating modes:
1) Punching down.
2) Whining that they are the victim of something
How can such a limited repertoire of behaviours qualify as intelligent life?
The term for it is DARVO – Deny, Attack, Reverse Victim and Offender.
You see it all the time with these people.
Is Cai or Dan in charge of Reform UK (Wales region) these days? Can’t keep up.
On a wider note, Reform loses any right to complain about inaccuracy on nation.cymru as they are always offered a right to reply before stories are published here and they appear to have a policy of not exercising this right.
Mr Parry-Jones seems to have a problem with being held to account by Nation.Cymru.
As i see it, he is ACCUSING NC of ACCUSING him of something but it has done nothing of the sort. He bangs on about wasting money but time is money and he is guilty of wasting the time of many with his inaccurate disinformation. Anyone who has had their time wasted by this individual should send him an invoice at their professional going rate x the hours wasted.
Reform’s intelligence does not extend further than discussing trivialities.
I love that Nation Cymru used this gratuitous criticism to restate all of the dodgy doings of the Reform muppets. More power to you Nation Cymru. Well done for speaking truth to those who’d rather not be scrutinised.
“The Books Council of Wales provides a periodicals grant which contributes towards our arts and culture coverage”
Interestingly there’s a long history of fascists opposing arts and culture.
Good on you. I am going to donate to you so that you can continue to uncover these dodgy practices!