Tabloid newspaper VG told you about the 40 injuries. About the video in the bathtub. About the thoughts of killing the baby. They merely omitted to tell you that those charged with the killing of Preston (13 months) are two men.

Jamie Varley (37), a teacher at South Shore Academy in Blackpool, is charged with murder, sexual assault, and 31 other counts, including for having taken photographs and video of the abuse.

His partner John McGowan-Fazakerley (32) is charged with having allowed the killing to occur, with complicity in sexual assault, and with gross child abuse.

Both deny criminal guilt. The case is being heard at Preston Crown Court and has been described by British media as one of the most serious cases of child killing in modern English legal history.

What VG chose to omit

VG mentions Varley’s age. VG mentions that he is a teacher. VG mentions the partner’s age. VG mentions that Preston was nine months old when he was placed with the couple. VG mentions 40 injuries, the video in the bathtub, the thoughts of killing.

But one detail VG does not manage to include: that those charged are two men.

Compare with how the case is covered where it is actually taking place. BBC refers to them explicitly as “the two men”. Lancashire Evening Post names both. The Guardian mentions both names and the relationship. IBTimes UK does the same. Readers of the British press know who the accused are. Readers of VG do not.

VG consistently uses gender-neutral formulations: “the partner”, “boyfriend”, “the couple”. The name McGowan-Fazakerley is not mentioned. A Norwegian reader who does not follow the British press, or Document, has no possibility of understanding that this was a same-sex couple who were to adopt an infant placed in the child welfare system.

Why it actually matters

This is no triviality. This is key information in a case where the very question is the adoption assessment.

A British system placed a healthy infant with two men — where one of them himself is said to have told his employer and social workers that he had “dark thoughts” about the child, thoughts of drowning or suffocating him. Despite this admission, despite the child’s three hospitalisations with injuries over the course of four months, despite the child’s fracture to the elbow … the placement by the child welfare authorities was carried out.

British authorities have in recent decades repeatedly failed white children because political correctness has blocked common sense. Rotherham. Rochdale. Telford. Children were for years subjected to abuse because officials were afraid of being called racists.

The question that must be asked is whether the same mechanism is at work here: Were the warning signals ignored because the officials were afraid of appearing homophobic? It is not inconceivable. It is in fact the first thing that ought to be examined after the trial.

The censorship is systematic

VG’s editorial choice is not unique. It forms part of a pattern in which the Norwegian mainstream press instinctively filters out facts that complicate a progressive narrative.

When the perpetrator fits poorly into the progressive map, he gradually disappears from the reporting. When the victim does not fit, the column space shrinks. This applies to immigrants who commit crime. It applies to trans activists who threaten violence. And it applies, as we now see, to same-sex couples in child welfare cases.

The cases are too large to be passed over in silence. So the editorial offices do the next best thing: They cover them, but without the facts that “complicate” the narrative.

The editorial offices will defend themselves by claiming that the information is “irrelevant”, that it “adds nothing to the case”, or by invoking the Code of Ethics of the Norwegian Press (Vær Varsom-plakaten) point 4.3 on group affiliation. But the principle is easy to test.

If Jamie Varley and his partner had been a heterosexual man and woman, would VG then have described them neutrally as “a couple”? Would they have omitted to mention that the woman was the mother and the man the father?

Of course not. “Mother” and “father” would have appeared in the lead. It is when facts are politically uncomfortable that they suddenly become “irrelevant”.

Nor is it irrelevant that when Norwegian readers encounter the formulation “a couple”, the overwhelming majority will assume that it is a man and a woman. When reality is otherwise, it must be specified. Anything else is to mislead the reader.

The gruesome should not be obscured

This case is one of the most grotesque I have read. And even the gruesome must be told — for it is only when we understand the gravity that we comprehend how great the betrayal of Preston actually was.

Over the course of scarcely four months, he was repeatedly left alone in the bathtub. The couple produced material of sexual abuse involving him. They inflicted more than 40 serious injuries on the baby, such as cuts, bruises, and fractures.

He was under one year old.

According to the prosecutor, he was also subjected to repeated sexual assaults, including oral penetration. The post-mortem found that the cause of death was acute obstruction of the upper airways — either by suffocation with a hand or soft material, or by objects being inserted into his mouth.

Thirteen months old.

The price of lying by omission

When Norway’s largest media house consciously edits away central information in order not to disturb a politically comfortable narrative, it is no longer journalism. It is activism.

Preston Davey was failed by a British adoption system that placed him with the men who killed him. He was killed by the two men who were supposed to protect him. And now he is being failed once more — by Norwegian editorial offices that do not dare to tell his whole story, because it does not fit their map.

Preston lived for thirteen months. He deserves better than a politically adapted storytelling from left-leaning activists in Akersgata.