The Sunday Express has been ordered to publish a page two correction following an inaccurate front-page story.
The story from January this year alleged that prisoners including Ian Huntley and Rose West are “virtually roaming at will” after being given “privacy locks” for their cells.
The paper published the following correction on page 30:
Correction: In our article “Monsters are given their own cell keys” on January 25, we said prisoners were “virtually roaming at will” with keys to their own prison cells. We would like to correct that and make it clear prisoners are given keys to be used to protect the privacy of their cells only at times when they are allowed out of their cells. Prisoners are not allowed to roam at will outside of these times.”
But following a complaint from a third party (not directly affected) IPSO decided the correction was insufficiently prominent.
Upholding a complaint under clause one of the Editors’ Code (accuracy) it said the following adjudication must be published on page two of the Sunday Express:
Nicholas Black complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that The Sunday Express had breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice by failing to publish a sufficiently prominent correction to an article headlined “Monsters are given their own cell keys”, published on 25 January 2015. The complaint was upheld, and IPSO required the newspaper to publish this adjudication.
The article had reported that some prisoners had been given keys to privacy locks on their cells. The sub-headline stated that prisoners were “virtually roaming at will”. The newspaper accepted that it was inaccurate to suggest that prisoners were able to roam at will, and published a correction in the following edition on its letters page, on page 30. The correction said that the privacy keys enabled prisoners to protect the privacy of their cells at times when they were allowed out of their cells; the privacy keys did not enable prisoners to roam at will.
The newspaper said that it had designated its letters page as the appropriate location for the publication of corrections and clarifications. The Committee found that this page did not constitute an established corrections column, and that a correction on page 30 was insufficiently prominent. The complaint was upheld.
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