A regional daily has been censured by the Press Complaints Commission over a headline it said was written at a remote subbing hub.
The Swindon Advertiser wrongly claimed that a garage, S&R Motors, was being investigated by trading standards officers.
However while it was true that a customer complaint had been referred to trading standards officers, it was not being investigated.
In an adjudication published today, the PCC upheld a complaint by the firm under Clause 1 of the Editor’s Code, which covers accuracy.
The adjudication also revealed that there was a delay of 13 days before the article was removed from the paper’s website, and a further 42 days before it provided a response to the complaint.
The PCC said: “The Editors’ Code requires publication of a correction or clarification “promptly and with due prominence” once a significant inaccuracy is recognised.”
The original story was published on 30 January under the headline “Trading Standards investigate garage.
It reported concerns by a member of the public about an alleged defect in a used car she had bought from the complainants.
As well as complaining at the headline, the garage disputed the customer’s comments and denied what they understood as the suggestion that they had behaved dishonestly or negligently by allowing her to drive an unsafe vehicle.
According to the adjudication, the newspaper initially did not respond to the Commission’s request for its comments for 13 days and a further delay of 42 days before it provided a substantive response to the complaint.
At this point it accepted that the headline was inaccurate and explained that it had been written by a sub editor at its “remote subbing hub.” It offered to publish a clarification on this point.
The PCC said: “The power of a remedy is inevitably weakened the longer the original inaccuracy is permitted to remain uncorrected.
“In this instance, the complainants had made the newspaper aware of a straightforward and easily verifiable inaccuracy on the day of publication, which had stemmed from a failure to take appropriate care over the article’s headline.
“It was unacceptable that the newspaper had not offered a clarification on this point until two months had passed; this was not “prompt”, and therefore it was insufficient to remedy the initial breach of Clause 1.
“In addition, the preamble to the Code makes clear that editors must “co-operate swiftly with the PCC in the resolution of complaints. The Commission was extremely concerned by the deficiencies in the newspaper’s complaints handling process, as exhibited in this instance.”
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As ye sow, so shall ye reap…
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Surely the inaccuracy in the headline has nothing to do with where it was written.
My guess is that whoever approved this headline would still have got wrong even if they were sitting in an office above said garage.
It is a myth that the more local the subbing unit, the better the subbing. The nationals don’t have subbing units scattered across the country, let alone around the world.
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Can’t see how remote subbing can be blamed for this one. Seems more like a headline which should never have been written and which should also been picked up when the page was revised
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Not directly due to hubbing as such, just rubbish subbing. Although the sub in question could have been the inexperienced kind brought in on reduced salaries to replace experienced old hacks like me who refused to move to a hub and were thus made redundant? If that’s the case then I suppose you get what you pay for.
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Geography is surely not the point. What is, is the value placed on good subbing. That’s what has gone, and its going is reflected in the very concept of a “subbing hub”.
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The suggestion seems to be that remote subbing is not as connected to the newsdesk so there is more room for error because subs are not in the loop as much. Fair comment I think, if all editorial teams don’t have a relationship papers will suffer.
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“Revised”, old hack? Is that something from the days of “off-stone” and “compositors” (who dey?)? Just how old are you? “Revised” indeed…
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Old Hack, as people have repeatedly pointed out on this forum, the Newsquest subbing hubs allegedly frequently do not deliver proofs of pages in time for them to be properly read or corrected
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Dick Minim – What’s wrong with ‘revised’? it’s in the dictionary just like ‘young’ and ‘plonker’.
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Editor or whatever deputy on duty should surely check front page?
Buck stops there.
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Astonishingly The Northern Echo this week carried a story on Page 5 with a header saying “It’s four decks of 24pt here” and the story was all in Latin! I kid you not.
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