Women’s weekly Pick Me Up has been rapped by the Press Complaints Commission after the star of one of its true-life tales complained that the story of her love affair with a vicar was “misleading”.
The piece, which appeared as “Sins of the Cloth” on 17 February last year, told the tale of the woman’s liaisons with the vicar after he conducted her son’s funeral.
The reader went to the watchdog because, she said, the story made it seem as though she started the affair while her estranged husband was alive.
The PCC upheld the complaint, saying reporters’ notebooks handed over by the IPC title did not fully back up its version of the tale. But it did not uphold a further complaint from the woman, who, despite having freely handed over snaps of her family, said she had not expected them to be published.
Pick Me Up published the PCC’s full adjudication in this week’s issue of the magazine. Editor June Smith-Sheppard said: “We go to great lengths to ensure that all the stories are accurate and regret we did not meet our high standards.”
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