Press regulator IPSO has criticised Reach regional website Birmingham Live over two “actively misleading” headlines.
The two articles, written by the same journalist and published in September, both featured a misleading headline which was corrected by the main text, IPSO said.
The first article was headlined: “State pensioners issued NEW update over free bus passes being ‘scrapped’ by Labour.” In fact there had been speculation that the Government might scrap bus passes but the story quoted a Labour spokesperson saying there were “no plans to withdraw” the scheme.
The second headline read: “State pensioners issued NEW update over Labour ‘scrapping’ Triple Lock.” It said Chancellor Rachel Reeves had “issued an update over potentially scrapping the triple lock,” quoting her as saying: “But, also, we’re committed to keeping the triple lock, not just for one year, but for the whole of this Parliament.”
A woman complained to IPSO because she felt the headlines made it sound like free bus passes and triple lock pensions respectively were being scrapped before the substance of the text revealed this was not the case.
Reach argued that the use of inverted commas over “scrapped” and “scrapping” showed a distinction “between comment, conjecture and fact”.
The publisher also said headlines should not be read in isolation but alongside the full article, which it claimed made clear the updates were “amid speculation” and “the prospect” of the schemes being scrapped. But it added that even read in isolation, the headlines did not present them being scrapped as fact.
IPSO’s complaints committee disagreed, saying the first headline “suggested that the article was providing an update on a decision that had been taken by the Government to ‘scrap’ or abolish bus passes; this was misleading as it did not reflect the true position, which was made clear only in the text of the article”.
IPSO said the article “did not support the headline. Rather, it served to correct the headline, which was actively misleading.”
The committee also said the use of inverted commas was “insufficient” to make clear Reach’s position that “the headline was not reporting an update on the scrapping of bus passes, but rather that it was providing an update on the speculation that bus passes might be scrapped”.
IPSO said the second article’s headline similarly gave “misleading information” and that the suggestion that Labour was scrapping the triple lock was “significant”.
It therefore said both articles breached Clause 1 (accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice which states publishers “must take care not to publish inaccurate, misleading or distorted information or images, including headlines not supported by the text”.
Birmingham Live has not changed or corrected the headlines in question but has published corrections as ordered by IPSO at the top of each article.
With an audience reach of 9.7 million people in December, Birmingham Live was the UK’s third-biggest regional news website behind Manchester Evening News (12.2 million) and the London Standard (9.8 million) but it was down 7% compared to November and 12% compared to December 2023.
Read the full IPSO ruling here.
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