A daily newspaper has been rapped by the press watchdog after running unverified claims about football fans’ behaviour from an anonymous source claiming to be a police officer.

The Daily Record reported claims that Rangers FC supporters prevented police officers from entering Glasgow’s Hampden Park stadium to deal with disorder taking place on the pitch at this year’s Scottish FA Cup Final.

The Glasgow-based Record quoted an unnamed police officer who said the fans started hitting, kicking and rocking police vans, adding a “mob mentality” prevailed outside the stadium, and that parents had used their children to block roads.

The paper’s story said that this account was backed up by other anonymous officers, with quotes backing up the claims attributed to them.

Trouble flared between Rangers and Hibernian supporters at the Scottish FA Cup Final

The article was accompanied by a smaller piece which said that the newspaper had put the accounts it had received from “multiple independent sources” to Police Scotland to be verified, but received a reply which did not address the matters raised.

An unnamed man who was present at the alleged incident complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that the story breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice.

He said that it was nonsense to suggest that parents were using their children to block the road, denied that anybody hit or spat at police vans and said it was inaccurate to report that “everybody walking past” had taken part in what the article said had taken place.

The Record responded that it had been unable to verify whether or not the person who sent the initial email was a police officer, but added the allegations had been set out as claims rather than facts, and that it had taken sufficient care over the article.

It said that the account was checked with two further police sources not present, who said that there had been “chat” among officers about the incident and gave an account which tallied with the information in the email.

The newspaper said it had also contacted the general secretary of the Scottish Police Federation, who said that some of the accounts he had heard accorded with the account provided in the email, and also provided a tweet from somebody who it said was a Rangers supporter who appeared to confirm that the incident had taken place.

However IPSO found the Record had not contacted anyone able to provide a first hand account of what occurred after the match and had been unable to demonstrate that any of the sources it had relied on could reasonably be described as “independent”, as the article had claimed.

The Committee added that in circumstances where Rangers supporters were accused of violence towards police, and other anti-social behaviour, the attempts it had made to support the account of an unidentified source it had been unable to verify were not sufficient to demonstrate that care had been taken over the accuracy of the article.

The complaint was upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.