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Weekly withdraws edition over wrong photo of drug dealer

A weekly newspaper had to withdraw thousands of copies from sale after publishing a photo of an innocent man alongside a story about a drug dealer being jailed.

The Essex Chronicle reported last week how 21-year-old Alexander Rudd, of Yare Avenue, Witham, was jailed for three years for dealing in thousands of pounds worth of Class A drugs.

But the paper published a photo alongside its story of a different Alexander Rudd  who had no involvement in the case but is understood to live in the same area.

The error led to the paper withdrawing its entire Braintree and Witham edition from sale,  before an apology was published online last Friday.

It said: “In some copies of yesterday’s paper we published a report about the jailing of Alexander Rudd of Yare Avenue, who was found guilty of drug dealing.

“The report was illustrated with a picture of a man also called Alexander Rudd, aged 23, but who is entirely innocent of any offence. We apologise to the innocent Mr Rudd for our error and for any distress caused to him or to his family.”

Around 3,000 copies of the edition were printed and Nev Wilson, senior editor at the Essex Chronicle Media Group, said they withdrew as many as they could from sale once they realised the mistake.

The Braintree and Witham edition was the only one in which the story appeared.

Nev told HTFP: “A photograph was printed in error in last week’s paper. We have apologised to the family affected and appropriate action is being taken.”

He added that a full apology would be printed in the paper and the article would be rerun with the correct photo.

The Chronicle’s story reported how Alexander Rudd was caught with 90 grams of cocaine worth up to £4,500, and £2,000 in cash stashed in a cabin in his garden.

He pleaded guilty to possessing a quantity of cocaine with intent to supply at Chelmsford Crown Court.

6 comments

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  • October 31, 2012 at 1:35 pm
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    Yeah, don’t need those costly experienced journalists, do we? Couple of workexes and that weirdo from IT can take care of it…ohhhh Lordy.

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  • October 31, 2012 at 2:25 pm
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    This is a bit of a puzzler to me. The guy was jailed for three years, so the police press office would have been able to give the paper a mugshot. And if they wanted another picture to go with the report, surely the mugshot would have shown them who they were looking for on Facebook?! It’s a bit of a reminder that snatching photos from Facebook is not without risks.
    Regardless, it’s the kind of thing that makes any reporter shudder and think “there but for the grace of God…” I hope everyone there can move on.

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  • October 31, 2012 at 3:35 pm
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    @A. Different police forces have different rules for mug shots. My current force I cover will give you one for anyone who has got more than two years, but the one on my previous paper had an annoying five year term limit before they would release one.

    The company I am at now made all our reporters sign something to acknowledge that we would not use pics from FB/Twitter etc without permission from the person who took the picture or whose page it was.

    If that is the case here then someone will lose their job

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  • October 31, 2012 at 3:37 pm
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    I think you have a hopelessly idealistic view of how the average police press office works.

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  • November 1, 2012 at 11:31 am
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    Why assume the picture came from an outside source? Newspapers have photo libraries, largely digital ones that are searchable. One can almost imagine the euphoria in the newsroom if they typed the chaps name (not a common one either) into a search box and the picture had come up. Of course the next thing to do would have been to check they were sure they had the right man…

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  • November 1, 2012 at 4:32 pm
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    I think hopelessly idealistic view would be a stretch. Our press office is pretty bad, with a few individual exceptions, but two years tends to be the threshold for getting a picture. Hadn’t realised it was five for some.

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