Sturdytree

Welcome

Hello Sturdytree and welcome to Wikipedia! I am Ukexpat and I would like to thank you for your contributions.

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ukexpat (talk) 13:49, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Beatrix Campbell

Hi,

As you're in touch with Beatrix Campbell, please would you draw her attention to WP:WikiVIP, and ask that she kindly oblige? We could also do with a photograph of her, and can display her ORCID ID, if she has one. Andy Mabbett (Pigsonthewing); Talk to Andy; Andy's edits 19:01, 4 September 2014 (UTC)

Sturdytree - instead of just editing the Beatrix Campbell article, it would be better of you argue your points first and explain why you are removing referenced material. Otherwise people might assume bad faith on your part and simply revert your changes whereas if you explain your points then your changes may not be challenged Clive Power (talk) 22:02, 5 December 2014 (UTC)

Replying to other users

You can reply to Andy Mabbett at his talk page here.

You can reply to Clive Power at his talk page here.

--ukexpat (talk) 01:41, 7 December 2014 (UTC)

Beatrix Campbell : needed changes to entry

Since August I have been making attempts to correct errors I perceived in the Beatrix Campbell entry. My insertions are continually removed and either the original replaced, or similarly erroneous material is substituted. A tedious and depressing process, and I am wearing of the attempt! Now, in response to messages from UKexpat and Clive Power last week, following the latest deletion of my latest insertion, I got in touch directly with Beatrix Campbell and asked her, with her greater knowledge, to help me to formulate a reasoned argument for the changes I have been proposing in the entry. I have now heard from her, and I hope it will not be considered incorrect if I paste in her own reply, see below. I would now greatly value advice as to how to proceed. Sturdytree (talk) 11:31, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Dear Wikipedia I am writing this in response to Cynthia Cockburn who came to me with members of your community’s queries and comments. I am not sure if I have to reply directly to you, or if that is allowed. But this is what I wish to say to you. There are always issues on a Wiki page where others’ perceptions of a person might seem to be unfair or possibly misinformed. As a journalist and public person who has reported on difficult and contentious issues (and received prizes for this) this is par for the course. I am relaxed about this being on a general continuum of “fair comment.” The problem with my page, which I didn’t set up, and with which I have never engaged previously, is that it has been used by some who appear to wish to use it as a forum to argue their corner and discredit me. This cannot be right. What I am asking is that Wiki accords it with the journalistic and indeed legal principles of fairness and balance. I have no objection to people with different opinions adding to my page, or indeed engaging with me as they do on Twitter or through my website. My profession invites this but, on Wikipedia, any engagement must be accurate and fair, particularly as in general I would not personally intervene on WIKI. The issues which I argue are biased and malicious mostly arise in the section on child abuse. My objection is that my page is used to fight old wars. I am simply asking for fairness and balance. I am open about my position - a position, I might add which in the current climate, is gathering more public and political weight Let me give you some examples: Cleveland Child abuse controversy. “Campbell also wrote in favour of now discredited allegations raised in the Cleveland Child sex abuse Scandal as well as similar discredited allegations in Nottingham. On 9 February 1991 Campbell appeared on television discussion programme After Dark[9] together with the then deputy director of Nottinghamshire social services Andy Croall and others.” Neither Cleveland or Nottingham are referenced, yet this is a section which is used to discredit me. Re After Dark and Croall: I was invited to participate in the After Dark programme because I had written about the Notttingham case, and I was also awarded a prize for my documentary about it. Andy Croall had appeared on After Dark to give the point of view of Nottinghamshire County Council (he had recently been appointed Deputy Director of Social Services, and, therefore, had not been involved in the Nottingham case.) It was only during the programme, as a result of my questioning, that he revealed he had another agenda: he was a fundamentalist Christian, who strongly opposed abortion. This horrified the then Director of Social Services and the social work team involved in the case. He was sacked. Why then include him as if somehow I was aligned to him and his christian evangelism? The reference is, therefore, misleading and biased. It is not correct to say Cleveland was ‘discredited’. It is much more complicated than that. The Cleveland case aroused great national debate and a judicial inquiry. The Wiki references misrepresents my involvement. I was the ONLY journalist allowed by the judge, Butler Sloss, to interview witnesses giving evidence (after she had consulted articles I had already written on the controversy). My book was one of two written at the time. It was well received and has had a further edition, and in fact it is being reissued in the New year.It was well reviewed at the time and has remained as a reference on numerous university reading lists. The other book was written by Stuart Bell MP “When Salem came to Cleveland” who was severely criticised by the Butler Sloss inquiry. I enclose the Wikipedia reference to Cleveland on his page “At Westminster, Bell became the Parliamentary Private Secretary to the Deputy Leader of the Opposition Roy Hattersley in 1983. He was promoted to the shadow frontbench in 1984 by Neil Kinnock as a Spokesman for Northern Ireland. However, he chose to resign his post after the Cleveland child abuse scandal which occupied two years of his life, after making unsubstantiated accusations of 'clinical error' against local pediatricians and child sexual abuse specialists. The paediatricians, Dr. Marietta Higgs and Dr. Geoffrey Wyatt, were later absolved and their forensic clinical work validated at a committee of inquiry overseen by Dame Elizabeth Butler-Sloss.” There is a view the doctors in the Cleveland case were wrong, faulty in their diagnosis. This is contrary to the Butler Sloss report itself (which did not criticise the diagnosis, but rather the management of the case), and to the conclusions of both the Northern Regional Health Authority and panels of eminent experts brought in to consider the contested cases. It is not true that Nottingham was discredited, as my attached account shows. Certainly, it was the subject of highly contested opinions, but there were convictions in the criminal court, there were findings in wardship proceedings, where it was the judge who described the activities as satanic, and in the Appeal Court. Indeed all the court proceedings affirmed the work of the foster carers and social workers, and found the children’s allegations to be reliable and persuasive. The workers who were put under severe pressure by the media were never disciplined, indeed their work was commended by every judge who dealt with the case. They were even commended in parliament by the Prime Minister. In the Wiki Page on Cleveland child abuse scandal, the references are largely from the Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday, which in the 90’s consistently held a position that was anti-state, anti child abuse professionals. The Mail was subject to successful libel actions by medical professionals who first published research ‘reflex anal dilatation’ - the diagnosis at the heart of the Cleveland controversy. Furthermore, in the WIKi Cleveland page, references cite someone called Charles Pragnell. If you check his webpage: http://www.fassit.co.uk/charles_pragnell.htm you will see that he is highly positioned, he writes articles about child protection professionals which border on the hysterical and are utterly unreferenced. I object to the use of Pragnell as a source without any serious scrutiny of who he is. More generally, I acknowledge that I am a positioned writer, but even writers who don’t agree with me acknowledge that I am a painstaking reporter, and have drawn my attention to what they regard has been a biased Wiki account of me. My page should not be used to fight out these child wars - they are and have been toxic, though, of course, in the current climate those ridiculing and undermining the child protection work of the 80’s and 90’s may be regarded with more scepticism than they were then. I have included my referenced account of both Nottingham and Cleveland. I sincerely hope this might reassure Clive Power, and would be grateful if you could advise me about the next step forward. I apologise for the fact that I am not a WIKI participant and therefore unfamiliar with your procedures. Beatrix Campbell

As I just noted in reply to exactly the same message on my talk page, the place to discuss this is the article's talk page or at WP:BLPN.--ukexpat (talk) 15:09, 12 December 2014 (UTC)

Follow-Up

This is a reply to your new post at WP:BLPN. I don't see any effort, one month later, actually to discuss the issues. Your new post does not specify what is wrong with the article. Please try to discuss on the article talk page, Talk: Beatrix Campbell. Robert McClenon (talk) 17:38, 21 January 2015 (UTC)