A regional daily has been forced to apologise over a headline which labelled football fans “hooligans” after a brawl broke out.
A complaint was made to the Press Complaints Commission by a Thomas Ledger following the piece in the Yorkshire Evening Post, which featured a police appeal headlined: “Plea to name Sheffield hooligans who targeted Leeds fans”.
The paper admitted a breach of clause one of the Editors Code, which relates to accuracy, after an investigation confirmed that the appeal from South Yorkshire Police actually related to ten Leeds supporters.
The apology read: “The headline on an article of February 1 about a police appeal for information over hooliganism surrounding the Sheffield Wednesday v Leeds United match on October 19 stated ‘Plea to name Sheffield hooligans who targeted Leeds fans’.
The appeal from South Yorkshire Police actually related to ten Leeds supporters and not Sheffield Wednesday fans. We apologise for the error and are happy to clarify the situation.”
An online article was also amended accordingly.
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Very regrettable, but I’m afraid errors are what you get when news /sports subs are reduced to just a few people working long hours, flat out.
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And the YEP is one of very few JP papers which still actually has subs, so if they can make these kinds of errors, there’s no hope for the rest of us…
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