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February 24, 2005updated 22 Nov 2022 2:29pm

Fathers 4 Justice ‘warns’ journalist

By Press Gazette

By Sarah Lagan

A columnist, bombarded with thousands of emails and threatening
letters by offended members of Fathers 4 Justice, has agreed to attend
a meeting of the pressure group.

Newcastle’s Sunday Sun assistant editor Ken Oxley upset the dads
after his column attacked their “tedious publicity stunts” and added
“that prat who climbed onto the Tyne Bridge at the weekend… a word or
two of advice.

Next time, jump.”

Oxley was inundated with
almost 15,000 emails from angry F4J members following the jibe. Most of
the emails, which were duplicates designed to clog up Oxley’s system,
warned “Fathers 4 Justice are watching you!” while others labelled him
a bigot, a sad little man and a bar-room bore.

He responded by
saying he wanted to set up a pressure group called Journalists 4
Justice “to protect news reporters from fathers who’ve been denied
access to their sense of humour.”

Oxley defended his suggestion
that the campaigner should jump off the Tyne Bridge, saying it was a
joke. He wrote an additional, more balanced piece in the paper on
Sunday, while defending his original column.

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Now he has agreed to
attend a F4J meeting in Newcastle. He said: “I will go and hopefully
convince them that it is their methods I disagree with, not their
cause. It’s a columnist’s job to have a strong opinion.”

Email pged@pressgazette.co.uk to point out mistakes, provide story tips or send in a letter for publication on our "Letters Page" blog

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