A port worker who opened a barrier for a tragic taxi driver who drowned after driving off a quay has had his complaint against a weekly newspaper rejected.

Graham Love complained to the Independent Press Standards Organisation that the Ayr Advertiser breached Clause 1 (Accuracy) of the Editors’ Code of Practice in a report of an ongoing Fatal Accident Inquiry (FAI) into the death of taxi driver James Irvine, who had been called to collect someone from Ayr Harbour Quayside, pictured below, but had driven off the side of the quay after being granted entry to the port.

Mr Love, who had called Mr Irvine to the port and opened the barrier to let him in, said that the article’s references to the possibility that the taxi driver could have been recovered from the water alive if the alarm had been raised sooner were inaccurate and this claim had not been heard at the FAI.

He was concerned that this suggested that if he had acted differently, Mr Irvine could have survived, and said that it had not been “determined” that the taxi driver had been wearing his seatbelt when he was found by police divers.

Mr Love said that the submissions to the court, which had been heard on the day and were reported in the article, had been primarily derived from written submissions which had been placed before the court, and the statements heard on the day would not have notably differed.

The Advertiser believed that its article was an accurate report of what had been heard in court. The newspaper’s journalist had been present on the day of the hearing being reported, and the newspaper provided the shorthand notes she had taken, along with a transcript, which supported the statements that the taxi driver could have been recovered from the water alive.

The newspaper said that the Inquiry had not heard any suggestion that the complainant should have been the person to raise the alarm, and no such suggestion had been included in the article. The notes included a number of references to whether or not the driver’s seatbelt had been undone, but did not say that it had been determined that he had been wearing his seat belt when he was found.

The written submissions provided by the complainant were not a verbatim record of what was heard at the Inquiry, and other statements were added when the submissions were orally delivered.

The complaint was not upheld, and the full adjudication can be read here.