The press watchdog has rapped a weekly newspaper for failing to report that three charges against a man who was on trial had been dropped.

The Independent Press Standards Organisation has upheld a complaint against the Basingstoke Gazette after the paper accepted it had published the inaccurate information in a court report.

Jade Ashford, the wife of the man against whom the charges had been dropped, went to IPSO over four separate articles published by the Gazette.

The first three were published online, while the fourth was published in print next to a separate story, which was about the court case but not under complaint.

The three online articles reported on a court case involving Mrs Ashford’s husband, the chair of players at Basingstoke Rugby Club, who was initially charged with three counts of sexual assault and one count of indecent exposure against one woman, as well as one count of indecent exposure against a second woman.

Complaining under Clause 1 (Accuracy), Clause 2 (Privacy), Clause 3 (Harassment) and Clause 9 (Reporting of Crime), Mrs Ashford said the stories contained a number of inaccuracies, including the fact that the second piece had reported on one of the indecent exposure charges, where the alleged victim had accused him of “touching her thigh and exposing his penis in her face”, despite this charge being dropped after the first day of the trial.

She also claimed the Gazette’s reporter had been asked to write the articles by one of the complainants in the trial because they were friends, and as a result the articles were one-sided and biased in their coverage.

Mrs Ashford also believed the fourth article, which was about three pupils at a primary school raising funds for a new minibus and referenced her place of work, was intentionally placed next to a story about the trial to humiliate her.

In response, the Gazette accepted that the second article, the first to be published after the charges were dropped, was inaccurate.

It said that the article referenced the charges and did not mention they had been dropped, but offered to remove this reference and add an addendum to the piece to indicate it had been updated.

The Gazette added the reporter covering the case was a freelance and had no input on how stories were covered, or where they featured, adding it was coincidental that the story which referenced Mrs Ashford’s place of work, featured near an article about the court case, because it did not know that this was where she worked.

IPSO upheld the complaint on the grounds that the Gazette had not checked the information regarding the charges was still accurate at the time of publication, represented a failure to take care.

It added the correction offered during its investigation addressed the inaccuracy, and the other complaints by Mrs Ashford were dismissed.

The full adjudication can be read here.