Following an article published in The Herald on February 24, 2015, headlined "Dentist wins £50,000 action after patient's false claims", Andrew McIntosh complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso) that The Herald had published inaccurate information in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors' Code of Practice.
Ipso upheld the complaint and established a breach of the editors' code. Ipso required The Herald to publish this decision by its complaints committee as a remedy to the breach.
The complainant had reported his dentist to the General Dental Council (GDC), but the dentist was subsequently cleared of any misconduct. After the GDC's findings, the dentist brought defamation proceedings against the complainant. The article under complaint inaccurately reported that the dentist had won his case and been awarded £50,000 in damages.
In fact, the dentist had dropped his case in April 2014, and had been required to pay costs.
The newspaper accepted that its article was inaccurate; this was a consequence of the journalist's reliance on inaccurate information provided by the court.
As soon as the journalist had realised the error and informed the newspaper, before the complainant had contacted Ipso, the newspaper had changed its online article to make clear the true position, and published a correction in its print edition, on page 2.
The complainant said that the correction had no headline distinguishing it as such, and did not include an apology.
Ipso's Complaints Committee noted that the journalist might have been entitled to rely on the original - albeit inaccurate - information provided by the court in relation to the case. However, the article went further than reporting this basic detail. Instead, it had been presented as a contemporaneous court report, despite the fact that the proceedings it was claiming to be reporting had concluded 10 months before the article was published. This demonstrated a failure to take care over the accuracy of the article. While the copy had been provided by a freelance journalist, under the code the newspaper was responsible for the content it had published. The committee established a breach of Clause 1 (i).
The newspaper had not included an apology in the correction. On this occasion, where the error had been personal to the complainant and had the potential to be seriously damaging to him, an apology was required. The newspaper had not properly complied with its obligations to correct the inaccuracy; this represented a further breach of the Code.
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