The Sun has apologised to hypnotist Paul McKenna over an article which alleged he was drunk on a flight.
It has now accepted that the entertainer was in fact suffering from food poisoning.
Press regulator IPSO has upheld a complaint from the entertainer but ruled that an offer already made by The Sun, to publish an apology for the article, was sufficient remedy. The apology will appear on page two, the original article was on page three.
IPSO has rejected a complaint from McKenna that a Sun journalist engaged in subterfuge by wrongly suggesting he had a tape of the incident in question. The Sun journalist had a recording of a witness account of the incident.
The story published on 1 January was headlined: “McKenna’s Brahms ’n hypnotist”.
The Sun provided an interview transcript in which one flight passenger stated that McKenna was “pissed”, that “he was staggering around and then it kicked off”, that “they stopped serving him as well”, and that “all the way across he was a pain in the arse”.
But the paper has agreed to publish a correction which says: “Our January 1 article about Paul McKenna wrongly alleged that Paul McKenna was drunk on a flight to Barbados; was accordingly refused alcohol by the flight crew; and reacted to that refusal by launching into an abusive rant which reduced a female flight attendant to tears. We now accept that these allegations were untrue. We apologise to Mr McKenna.”
McKenna said his actions were due the fact that he was suffering from food poisoning.
Read the Paul McKenna versus The Sun IPSO adjudication in full.
Picture: Shutterstock.
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