A regional daily has been rapped for reporting a soldier had been found guilty of supplying drugs – more than three hours before he was cleared of the offence.
The Independent Press Standards Organisation said Wolverhampton daily the Express & Star had committed a “serious failure” in publishing the inaccurate court report on its website before the jury had reached a verdict in the case.
The Express & Star had accidentally published the “holding piece”, which reported Oliver Bramwell, pictured, had been convicted of supplying cocaine to a friend, at 10.30am on 4 August this year.
The jury reached a unanimous not guilty verdict at 1pm on the same day.
A close male relative of Mr Bramwell’s complained to IPSO over the erroneous article, which was fully cleared from all internet servers by 2.49pm.
Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy) Clause 2 (Privacy) and Clause 9 (Reporting of Crime) of the Editors’ Code of Practice, the unnamed relative said the “entirely inaccurate” article was seen by a number of people, and that even after it was removed from the newspaper’s website, it appeared in Google search results with the inaccurate headline for over a week.
Although the relative was not named in the article, the man said that by specifying his distinctive job, and his relationship to Mr Bramwell, he had been identified in breach of Clauses 2 and 9 – adding this had exposed him to a heightened risk of attack because of the nature of his work.
The E&S accepted the article’s inaccuracy and said the holding piece was written ahead of the jury’s verdict had been accidentally published onto the site in what it called “a very unfortunate human error.”
The newspaper said that the story was not visible on the homepage of the site, that it was not promoted on social media, and that as soon as the mistake was realised, it was taken down, four hours after first publication.
At this point, the article was invisible for the vast majority of browsers, but the E&S then contacted its internet hosts in the USA to ensure it was fully cleared from the last few servers by 2:49pm on the day of publication, while the correct version of the article, stating Mr Bramwell had been cleared, was published as the lead story on its homepage on the same day accompanied by a footnote noting the inaccurate first version of the article.
The E&S further added it had repeatedly asked for Google to speed up removal of the old version of the article, which remained in search results until 11 August, made a change so that anybody clicking on the search result on the earlier article would be directed to the article reporting Mr Bramwell’s acquittal.
The newspaper apologised for the reference to the complainant, accepting there was no wider public interest to justify this, and said further training would be given to ensure that the same mistake did not happen again, while new systems were in place to prevent any repeat.
IPSO found the publication of a court report before the jury had reached its verdict, wrongly reporting that a defendant had been convicted of criminal offence, was a serious failure.
It welcomed the paper’s efforts to rectify the error, but ordered the E&S to publish the adjudication of the upheld complaint on its website.
The full adjudication can be read here.
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Accidental?
This is poor. Very poor.
In actual fact, disgraceful.
What is happening to my industry?
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When I worked for the Express & Star this would have been a sacking offence.
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If I were the poor guy I’d ask my solicitor to sue the paper!
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It’s really easy to click on publish instead of save. We’ve all been there. What’s poor is that it was not picked up for four hours. Awful.
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I loved being a newspaper editor, and I still love newspapers. But look at what they have become.
This is just utterly awful, and every sorry aspect of this shameful cock-up can be traced to the continual erosion of a once magnificent industry.
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A disgrace to our trade. But somehow not surprising given modern low standards caused by staff shortages, inexperience and lack of thorough editing.
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A terrible mistake but sometimes issues like these are the result of a bog standard error, not an inevitable result of changes in the industry as many of the antiques posting above seem to believe.
It stretches credulity to believe errors such as these are a new phenomenon.
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@newhack17 – Antiques? Really?
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Newhack17. The point is the fewer staff the more pressure the more mistakes. Where did you get your amazing powers to know the commentators are antiques. First rule of hacking…do not assume.
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Very easy to pass judgement. A shame, because the Express and Star is a paper where staff actually go out to find news — rather than the situation at many once-respected regional dailies where deskbound journalists mainly trawl social media and re-jig publicity handouts.
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Sloppiness reaches new level. Sacking or summary execution should be considered.
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