Mail Online has removed a story describing a village as Britain’s “grimmest” after its MP, Gavin Williamson, complained to press regulator IPSO.
The story, published in April, reported that Featherstone in South Staffordshire was “covered in rubbish and dog faeces”, hemmed in by prisons and overrun by crime.
Williamson complained to the regulator that the story included several inaccurate claims about Featherstone, for example that a recently constructed bus shelter depicted in the article had been “torched by yobs”.
Williamson said the bus stop was in Shareshill, rather than Featherstone, and that the damage was caused not by vandalism but by a lorry transporting bales of hay that caught on fire and fell on it.
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The former defence secretary disputed the claim that Featherstone is “surrounded by three jails”, arguing that the prisons referred to were in neighbouring Brinsford and that one of them was a young offenders institute.
The story also reported that between January and the start of April this year there had been 39 violent and sexual offences, 13 vehicle crimes, six thefts and five cases of criminal damage and arson in the village – as well as that “[a]ll 165 burglaries reported in Outer Rothwell in West Yorkshire in the past three years remain unsolved”.
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Williamson incorrectly took the latter quote to suggest that Mail Online had accidentally published crime figures for Featherstone in Yorkshire rather than Featherstone in Staffordshire, but the reference to Outer Rothwell had been made as the article linked to an earlier report about “England’s worst neighbourhood for unsolved burglaries”. Mail Online informed IPSO that the crime statistics did indeed relate to Featherstone in Staffordshire.
Mail Online initially stood by its report that the bus shelter had been “torched by yobs” because local posts on social media had claimed as much, but was subsequently informed by the news agency that provided the story, SWNS, that Williamson’s account was correct, so published a footnote correction.
The publication also offered to amend the claim that Featherstone is “surrounded” by prisons “as a gesture of goodwill and in the interests of resolving the complaint”.
This did not resolve the complaint however, and IPSO began an investigation, during which Mail Online offered to remove the article from the website altogether.
Williamson agreed that this would satisfy him and so IPSO did not determine whether a breach of the code had occurred.
Williamson is the latest in a string of MPs to complain to IPSO about press coverage over the past year, although such complaints have typically related to stories reporting on the politicians themselves.
In May Conservative MP Scott Benton unsuccessfully complained that The Times had unjustifiably used subterfuge when filming him appearing to lobby for the gambling industry without his knowledge.
The SNP’s Kirsty Blackman complained in November about a column in The National – written by another SNP MP, Joanna Cherry – that had mentioned her. Her complaint was also unsuccessful.
And former Conservative health secretary Matt Hancock has had mixed success complaining to IPSO, winning one complaint against the Mirror but losing his complaint over The Telegraph’s “Whatsapp files” story and another about a claim in the Mirror that he was a “failed health secretary and cheating husband”.
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