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Nathan Owen jailed for faking brake failure on M57 and M58 motorways

Owen claimed his Jaguar's brakes failed while driving at speeds up to 86mph, leading to a police pursuit

MediaBias Comparison Desk

AI-assisted coverage comparison, editor-supervised

This article was written at the MediaBias News desk from the one-paragraph digests an aggregator publishes for each of the outlets listed below it, together with 2 of those outlets' own reports read in full. How we do it

Updated
Nathan Owen jailed for faking brake failure on M57 and M58 motorways
Nathan Owen jailed for faking brake failure on M57 and M58 motorways · The Independent (embedded from source)

What this story says

  • Nathan Owen, 33, was jailed for falsely claiming his Jaguar’s brakes failed during a high-speed drive on 6 March 2024.
  • Owen reached speeds of up to 86mph on the M57 and M58 motorways while reporting the alleged malfunction to police.
  • Footage from Merseyside Police shows one police vehicle being struck 31 times during the pursuit.
  • No centre- or right-rated outlets reported the story, according to the digests available.

Nathan Owen, 33, was sentenced for falsely reporting a brake failure in his Jaguar while driving at speeds up to 86mph on the M57 and M58 motorways on 6 March 2024. Owen contacted Merseyside Police to claim his vehicle was uncontrollable, prompting a pursuit involving multiple police cars.

Footage released by Merseyside Police shows Owen’s Jaguar being driven alongside police vehicles during the incident. One police car was struck 31 times. The force described Owen’s speeds as "extreme" in the digests of the reports.

What the coverage left out

No centre- or right-rated digests carried the story. The omission is established only from the digests available, which do not include full reports from those outlets.

How each side covered it

Our own reading of the reporting listed below, written from the outlets’ articles rather than quoted from them. The reasoning is set out on our methodology page.

Left

  • The two left-rated digests, both from The Independent, led on Owen’s false claim of a brake malfunction as part of a "financial ploy". Both included the detail that Owen reached speeds of up to 86mph and that one police vehicle was hit 31 times during the pursuit. The digests also noted the release of police footage showing the incident.

Centre

We hold no leaning breakdown for this story, so there is nothing to report about the centre.

Right

We hold no leaning breakdown for this story, so there is nothing to report about the right.

Read it at the source

2 outlets, grouped by the leaning a published rating gives them. Every headline links to the original.

Left

2

Centre

0

No outlet in this group ran the story.

Right

0

No outlet in this group ran the story.

Not rated

0

No outlet in this group ran the story.

How did this read?

About the coverage, not about the story. We do not ask whether you agree with what happened — we have no honest use for that answer.

Nathan Owen jailed for faking brake failure on M57 and M58 | MediaBias News