#paulclarke : the reporter in court speaks

This weekend there was a twitter storm over Paul Clarke, who found a gun, took it to his local police station and was arrested and now faces five years in prison.

This morning, a slightly bewildered-seeming Holly Thompson twittered this:

I'm the journalist who wrote the #paulclarke story. Wow. What a response.

Since the Surrey Times had the comments on the story switched off all weekend, she, and they, were probably unaware of the 'storm' until this morning.

Naturally, she's been deluged with questions, mostly from people seeking 'more facts', 'more facts'.

So far, the following has been revealed by Holly:

Ms Thompson was in court "For the full two days". She has "also spoken to Mr Clarke a lot during and after the trial"

 [Paul Clarke] didn't tell police he had a gun. He said: "I've got something to give you". He admits that was mistake but didn't know the law

"Mr Clarke didn't take the stand. His written statement was read out in court and not disputed by the prosecution."

When told that there were many 'disbelievers' out in Twitterland and in the blogosphere:

"I'm sorry to disappoint anyone but all the facts are there. We wouldn't have printed it unless we knew that for certain"

When told that there was little or no national press coverage:

"it was in the nationals. Was sourced exclusively to the Sun who had it as a page lead on Thursday"

When told that even that hadn't made it online:

".. its weird. Can only assume the nationals are just as dubious of my court copy as many other tweeters seem to be!"

CF has asked Holly to do a guest post here, and she has agreed. However, it wouldn't be astonishing if the Surrey Mirror (or someone else, eh conspiracy theorists?) prevented her from doing so.

Watch this space...

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