An evening paper has been found guilty of an inaccuracy in a story that could have put a woman and her children at risk.

The Press Complaints Commission upheld a complaint against the South Wales Evening Post about a story Axeman in siege drama at flats published earlier this year.

The article reported how Llanelli residents were told to stay inside after a man armed with a knife was confronted by police.

He was the estranged husband of the complainant but the article, published on April 8, went on to suggest that the incident started with a domestic row involving the two and the complainant’s new boyfriend.

The complainant said that it was not her boyfriend – she did not have one – but was simply her neighbour.

She was concerned that the inaccuracy put her and her children at risk of violence from her estranged husband.

The woman was promised an immediate correction in print but a follow-up did not appear until May 22.

She was not satisfied with the correction, which she claimed did not remedy the damage caused by a front page story almost two months before.

The Commission found the original story was inaccurate and that the error had not been corrected promptly in breach of Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Code of Practice.

The newspaper told the Commission that a correction had been prepared as soon as the error was pointed out but that there had been a breakdown of communication and the piece was not published for this it was sorry. By the time the complaint was lodged with the Commission the complainant’s estranged husband had been found dead.

Clause 1 of the code, concerning accuracy, requires that “whenever it is recognised that a significant inaccuracy… has been published, it must be corrected promptly.”

While it accepted that the time lapse between the original piece and the correction may have been inadvertent, the fact remained that more than six weeks had passed before the error was put right and the commission did not consider that this was acceptable in the circumstances where the potential consequences of the mistake were serious.

The commission also noted that the correction, included in a short follow-up article, did not refer to the original article and did not include an apology, which would have been appropriate in this case.

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