MediaGuardian reports:
“The Sun, the People and the Sunday Mail have escaped censure over any payments to the families of Chantelle Stedman and Alfie Patten, the teenager they falsely reported became a dad aged 13, after legal restrictions made it impossible for the press watchdog to complete its investigation.”
In May, the Media Standards Trust’s Martin Moore wrote this post, raising some unanswered questions about the case.
More brilliance from Martin Belam on the Mirror’s coverage of Alfie Patten and why, when you take down a story, you need to check the keyword stuffed headlines.
Despite silence from the UK press on developments in the case, a quick search for ‘Alfie Patten’ on Google News brings up a plethora of international stories too.
The Sun’s online coverage of ‘baby father’ Alfie Patten broke traffic records for the site. Hitwise’s Robin Goad analyses how search and social media played a part in this.
Web traffic to The Sun surged on February 13 following a report on 13-year-old new dad Alfie Patten.
According to a press release from the title, the story became The Sun’s most popular online article of all time recording 3.9 million unique users in one day, beating the previous high of 1.6 million.
UK unique users came in at 884,000, while in the three days up to and including February 15 a video of new parents Patten and girlfriend Chantelle Steadman attracted 1.2 million views, the release claims.
The website’s message boards saw 180,000 users reading and leaving comments on the story.